Council says the treated water is safe. The motion in front of it is about the people taking water straight from the creek

What is being asked for

The motion is in the name of Councillor Kyle MacGregor and runs to nine parts. It does not ask Council to do the testing itself. It asks Council to write to the NSW agencies that carry the power to, formally requesting that they undertake or coordinate a targeted investigation of PFAS within aquatic biota in Ourimbah Creek.

What it wants sampled is specific: fish likely to be caught or consumed by members of the community, yabbies and other edible aquatic organisms, species at different trophic levels, and sediment where that would help identify exposure pathways, all assessed against Australian and NSW human-health, food-consumption and ecological guidance.

Then the consequence, which is the part a person fishing there would want to know. If levels are found that warrant consumption restrictions, the motion asks the agencies to issue public-health and recreational-fishing advice, to directly notify affected communities, and, with Council, to install or arrange appropriate warning signage at relevant public-access and recreational-fishing locations along Ourimbah Creek.

The people who pump their own water

This is the group least likely to be reached by a general reassurance about town water, and the motion treats them separately. It seeks advice from NSW authorities on whether, as a precaution, residents extracting untreated water from Ourimbah Creek should avoid taking water during or immediately following flood and high-flow events when the creek contains elevated suspended sediment or turbidity and instead wait until the water has cleared before extraction.

And having got that advice, it asks Council to write directly to known landholders along Ourimbah Creek Road and other relevant sections of the Ourimbah Creek catchment who may extract untreated creek water, providing the advice in clear and practical language.

That is a narrow, practical ask, and it is the one part of the motion that would change what a particular household does on a particular day.

Mardi Dam, and why cores

The motion also asks Council to arrange a PFAS sediment investigation within Mardi Dam, or else get independent expert advice on the scope of sampling needed. One clause is worth reading closely: any such investigation should include sediment cores or other sampling capable of distinguishing recent deposition from historical accumulation.

That is a question about time, not just presence. A core can show whether something arrived recently or settled years ago, which is a different question from whether it is there at all, and it is the question that tells you whether a source is still active.

What Council’s own officers say back

The Chief Executive Officer’s response does not dismiss the subject. It argues about sequence and about who should pay. Its position is that these matters should first be led and technically advised by the relevant NSW Government agencies before Council commits to any additional Council-funded investigations.

It also sets out what Council says it already knows, and this is the passage with the most information in it: Current investigations indicate that PFAS detections within the catchment are associated with an Environment Protection Authority licensed site, with concentrations reducing significantly downstream and remaining below detection limits at Council’s water extraction point (PS11).

Three separate claims sit in that sentence: a source that is a licensed site, a gradient that falls with distance, and a reading at the extraction point that is below the limit of detection. The papers do not name the site and neither do we. The motion refers to the 2 known sources of PFAS within the Ourimbah Creek Catchment without naming them either.

On the work already under way, the response says Council has engaged an independent specialist consultant to prepare a PFAS Management Plan for water and sewer operations, covering sources and pathways, monitoring data, risk assessment and management responses, and that any Mardi Dam sediment work should be guided by it rather than run ahead of it.

The cost, which is stated as unknown

The financial note is unusually frank. Adopting the motion may result in additional unbudgeted expenditure associated with specialist scientific investigations, laboratory analysis, independent expert advice, community communications and project management, and The financial exposure cannot be determined until the scope of any investigations is confirmed and advice is received from the relevant NSW Government agencies.

So the choice put to councillors was not between doing something and doing nothing. It was between commissioning work now at a cost nobody can yet state, and waiting for State agencies that officers say hold the legislative authority, technical expertise and established assessment frameworks to do it.

A middle path is in the papers too

If Council wanted to move without committing to its own testing programme, officers set out what that looks like: write to the agencies seeking advice on the appropriateness of sampling fish, yabbies and aquatic biota in the creek, on any recommended public-health advice for residents extracting untreated water, on the need for and scope of sediment investigation in Mardi Dam, and on which agency is responsible for public-health notifications, recreational fishing advice and community communications. Responses would then come back to Council publicly.

Where this came from, and what we cannot tell you

The motion is not freestanding. It asks Council to forward community letters dated 15 and 31 August and three presentations delivered at the Ourimbah Valley PFAS Community Meeting on 15 August 2026. So there is a body of community material behind it that we have not seen and that is not in the agenda.

It also connects to something residents told Council themselves. When Council ran its water and sewer values engagement, PFAS was one of the environmental concerns participants named, alongside chlorine taste and odour and pollution monitoring.

What we cannot tell you is what happened to it. This is a notice of motion, which is a councillor’s proposal, not a decision. The minutes of the 22 September meeting are not on Council’s business papers portal at the time of writing, checked today, so whether the motion was carried, amended, lost or deferred is not yet public. We will read them when they appear and report what they show.