Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Aug 21, 2011 12:19 pm I am hoping someone may know a bit about Council responsibilities when constructing roads and drains. my problem is in the City of Greater Geelong area . its a bit complex, i'll try to explain it. i bought a vacant block of land recently. it is on a major suburban road but at the bottom of a steep dip. my land goes down to the bottom of the dip, then there is a 6 metre easement for "right of way and drainage". years ago the road was built up about 2-3 metres above the natural ground level and a culvert put under the road at the lowest point for drainage. the wing walls of the culvert actually are in my land and the water flows directly into my land. there is no easement for drainage on my land. this road build blocked access to my block of land and also blocked access to the road easement, because of a steep bank they built. i have been in dicussion with the council for weeks and have made various proposals. essentially i want to use the unmade road easement to access my land. i have offered to fill it in at my expense to make a driveway, it only needs to be about 22 metres long. the Council have said that it would need to be a fully made road to council specs and thus very expensive. then they offered to extend the culvert into the easement, sharing the cost with me, take a drainage easement over my land where the culvert goes, then allow me to construct a driveway over the top of the new extended culvert. the water flow would now be directed into the road/drainage easement. i get a strong feeling they are trying to cover up mistakes that have been made when the road was built up. my "legal" questions are: when building a road is it permissable to block access to private land? when building a road is it permissable to block access to a public road ("the right of way" easement) ? is it permissable to put the culvert partially in private land when there is no drainage easement? is it permissable to direct water flow onto private land when there is no drainage easement? they have tried to block me all through the discussions. they tried to have the area defined as a "Natural Waterway", this has some caveats i don't know about. they deliberately used wrong definitions, like calling the easement a Council Reserve which it isn't. only after i found the original subdivision plans from 1961 and quoted the easement to them did they acknowledge it was a road as well as a drainage easement. finally the engineer in charge agreed that i had a right to use the road, that's when they put to me the impossible solution. what occurs to me is that if they extend the culvert and take an easement over that part of my land, they then have fixed the problem of having an "illegal" drain. i really think i am being conned. it could even be "legal" for me to actually fill in the whole area of the culvert wing walls to make a driveway on my land, thus completely blocking their drain. i would have great pleasure telling them i would do this if its true. so i would love to hear from anyone with knowledge, or someone to contact or even a lawyer with this knowledge. i really don't want to have to go to VCAT. thanks in advance. Re: Roads and Drainage - Council problem 2May 30, 2012 2:16 pm Just curious how you got on with council. I have a similar problem where stormwater from road/service road flows directly into my land via a concrete drain. Council have continuously said that this is natural surface overflow, it clearly isnt, infact i doubt council have even visited the site to see. They continue to go down this path and the path of " even so, there is no capital works budget for any specific drainage works" etc etc....i think they are hoping i go away. My comment to that was that i dont have any budget to pay my next 10 years council rates.....i dont think the engineer appreciated that !!!! 2 5841 Need more photos from around the house including your gutters. We have had 3 of the wettest years in a row for some time so that wouldn't be helping 3 6947 Hi HomeOne, I'm in the midst of landscaping a cat run down the side of my house, and the recent rains have me wondering if I need to install some sort of drainage. I've… 0 12274 |