When the Launceston Chamber of Commerce was formed way back in 1849, it was issues relating to navigation and trade on the Tamar that prompted business to join together.
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Now 171 odd years later, here we are again where the business community is making the case for positive change to the estuary on our doorstep.
In partnership with a cleaner river goes a huge economic opportunity for this city.
The love/ hate relationship with the Tamar estuary has developed since European settlement.
In all probability, the only people who truly value the river for what it is were those here before European settlement.
Now we love it when the tide is in and we hate it when the tide is out.
The issues relating to the river are not surprising: it has a little too much of everything in it, from poo to heavy metals to silt and invasive weeds.
There is plenty of willingness to do something, and a sizeable envelope of funding to go with it.
What there appears to be too little of however, is a clear understanding of who is ultimately managing the project.
At a very casual count, there are well over 15 different agencies that have responsibility for some parts of the river.
This ranges from environment, navigation, water flows, floods, effluent and on, and on, and on.
This is not to disparage any one of these organisations - all are doing valuable work, indeed ground-breaking work in many instances.
But who is pulling it all together, who is ultimately responsible for quality outcomes in a timely manner that meets community expectations?
The Chamber has been discussing publicly for some considerable time the need for an overall body to be in charge of this most important challenge.
If there was a similarly-funded project to build a road, a school, a hotel or a mine, there would be in place, right at the outset, a skilled management team with a project lead who would be ultimately responsible for getting the job done on time, to the right standards and to budget.
They would orchestrate the various entities, within their specialisations, to do their job in the right sequence in order to bring the project to a satisfactory conclusion.
Yet it is increasingly clear that this chain of responsibility is quite unclear when it comes to the Tamar.
- Neil Grose is chief executive of the Launceston Chamber of Commerce.