'Red waterfall' runoff from construction site spoils Wombarra sea

The rain caused a huge quantity of sediment to be washed off the "Wombarra Vista" development near Coledale Hospital, across the road through private properties and down to the ocean, where a large reddish-brown plume extended at least 100m out.

The controversial 14-lot development site had been being excavated by engineering company Menai Civil and while some hay bales were in place by Wednesday morning - after complaints were made - it was too late.

Resident Sandra Woods said her son had reported it on Tuesday after seeing what he called a "red waterfall" rushing off the site onto the road.

"He rang the EPA and they said 'not our problem', we'll put you through to council," she said.

"We knew rain was coming - good grief, don't they have a phone? They should have taken more precautions.

"Even in the past few weeks I've looked at it and thought 'this will be a mess if we have heavy rain'. And we knew we were going to have heavy rain."

David Roach said the damage to marine life had already happened.

"All this runoff that's coming from this development - first of all it's putting these properties in jeopardy, it's going straight across private property into people's houses and garages," he said.

"It's going down on to a pristine rock shelf, where you have nudibranchs and molluscs and sea anemones. It's filling up the pools on the rock shelf, it's going out into the ocean, there's big plumes in the ocean, and that's where there are colonies of weedy sea dragons, local lobsters and all kinds of other things."

"These things are being affected right now."

The Mercury sought comment from Menai Civil by email, phone and SMS but received no response.

Wollongong City Council said its staff had been to the site on Wednesday after complaints.

"The developer and their project managers are responsible for the project and the works underway at this site," a council spokeswoman said.

"Council, as the site's principal certifier, is taking steps to ensure the developer is undertaking works in accordance to the conditions within their development consent.

"While pollution breaches are a key component of our current investigation, we have also requested the developer's consultant immediately review all their controls on site."

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