Splendour in the Grass flooding disruption was foreseeable

Flooding that affected last weekend’s Splendour in the Grass at the North Byron Parklands were foreseeable, avoidable and dangerous to the environment according to media reports.

Tens of thousands of festivalgoers were impacted by mud caused by a rain event that saw a cancelled first day of programming and resulted in lengthy delays in accessing and egressing the site.

On Monday Splendour’s co-Chief Executives, Jessica Ducrou and Paul Piticco of Secret Sounds, apologised on social media but said they “did everything we could considering the circumstances”.

The pair added “we apologise for any inconvenience you may have experienced at our 20th Splendour.

“It certainly wasn’t our easiest show but even with the trials and tribulations we are so happy to be back … we really did try to provide the best experience possible under some extremely tricky conditions.”

Secret Sounds said Moshtix would be in touch with ticket holders to discuss “proportionate refunds” for concerts and other events that were cancelled on Friday, and for transport to the site that didn’t appear.

However, while 60mm to 80mm of rain fell at the weekend on the North Byron Parklands site - reports indicate that the site was already waterlogged as a result of months of heavy rain.

Local government representatives from Byron and Tweed Shire Councils told Guardian Australia the festival should have never been permitted to proceed.

Independent Byron Shire Councillor Cate Coorey told Guardian Australia “the site has been flooding since Cyclone Debbie (in 2017).

“It fills up with water pretty fast and police have said that basically the site can’t be evacuated in under eight hours - so that’s just plain dangerous when you’ve got 50,000 people on site.”

Coorey said there were also community concerns about whether human effluent could contaminate surrounding wetlands, adding “there’s no monitoring being done, we don’t know [what the environmental] damage is, unless someone goes in there and takes some coliform samples for the waterways, and that’s not happening.”

Basil Cameron, who sat on Byron Shire Council for 13 years until the last local government elections, said it was common knowledge the site flooded regularly.

Cameron noted “to say that a flood or rain had impacted the site and that was somehow unprecedented, well, I did a double take, because there are systems in place monitoring the creek, monitoring the rainfall and that should have told them that what happened last weekend was quite foreseeable.

“We all know it’s been a very, very wet year here. You know the characteristics of the site, you know, how much water is sitting just below the surface. They should have seen this a number of days beforehand … they really should have cancelled the event then instead of just soldiering on and getting into the mess that they got into.”

Sue Higginson, now the Greens’ upper house representative for the northern rivers area, represented the community as a public interest lawyer in a successful 2009 challenge in the NSW Land and Environment Court to prevent Splendour relocating to the North Byron Parklands site from its previous site of Belongil - 25 kilometres farther south.

This ruling was subsequently made defunct when the Parkland’s owners applied for a development application, which was granted by the NSW Department of Planning.

The festival relocated to the North Byron Parklands in 2013.

Since then, the site - which also hosts the NSW leg of the annual Falls festival - has been granted permission through the Independent Planning Commission to more than double the number of events it hosts, from fewer than 10 days a year in 2012 to 20 in 2019. In less than 10 years, Splendour’s cap on capacity has grown from 35,000 to 50,000 patrons a day, and the Falls festival from 25,000 to 35,000 a day.

Higginson told Guardian Australia that “North Byron Parklands was never an appropriate venue for Splendour in the Grass.”

An online petition that has attracted more than 1,000 signatures since Monday is calling on Live Performance Australia to ensure Splendour organisers and all related commercial entities hold all ticket proceeds in trust and not release them until satisfactory refunds have been handed out to punters.

Images: Splendour in the Grass at the North Byron Parklands in past years.