By: David Nixon, NSW SQID Taskforce Chair, Sydney
Date: October 11, 2025
Local councils are the long-term custodians of our community infrastructure. When a new subdivision is built, it is the council that takes on the responsibility for the roads, the pipes, and the parks—not just for a year, but for decades. Stormwater assets are no different. They are handed over with the implicit promise of a cleaner environment.
But what if that promise comes with a hidden, exorbitant price tag?
Right now, the system for approving Stormwater Quality Improvement Devices (SQIDs) is inadvertently saddling councils with massive, unfunded financial liabilities. The assets designed to protect our waterways are creating a different kind of crisis: a slow-burning financial headache that is impacting council budgets across the state. 💸
The Flawed Handover: A Focus on Day One, Not Year Ten
The current process is dangerously shortsighted. A developer installs a SQID, its performance is evaluated against the national protocol (SQIDEP) for pollutant removal, and, once approved, the asset is handed over to the council to own and maintain in perpetuity.
The problem? The approval says nothing about what it will actually cost to keep that asset functioning for the next 10, 20, or 30 years.
It’s like being gifted a high-performance sports car without being told it requires a specialist mechanic every 5,000 kilometres and that the parts have to be imported at great expense. The gift quickly becomes a burden.
For councils, this “gift” arrives in the form of assets with unknown Whole-of-Life Costs. The approval process doesn’t require a transparent assessment of long-term maintenance needs, the safety of access, or the complexity of installation. This information gap is leaving councils to foot the bill for decades of unforeseen expenses.
The Real-World Financial Headaches for Councils
This isn’t a theoretical problem. The NSW SQID Taskforce has heard from councils across the state about the consequences of this flawed system:
- Massive, Unbudgeted Costs: Councils are inheriting assets that require proprietary equipment, specialised contractors, or frequent, costly servicing. These expenses were never factored into long-term asset management plans, forcing councils to divert funds from other essential services like roads, libraries, and parks.
- Deferred Maintenance & Asset Failure: When maintenance is prohibitively expensive or complex, it inevitably gets deferred. As a result, the SQID stops performing its primary function. It clogs, it bypasses flows, and the promised environmental benefits are never realised. The asset exists on the books but fails in the real world.
- Increased Risk to Staff: Many devices that look good on paper are hazardous to maintain in practice, involving confined space entry or dangerous access points, placing council staff at unacceptable risk.
Breaking the Cycle: It’s Time for a Fairer System
Councils cannot be expected to carry this burden alone. The system needs to change. The NSW SQID Taskforce Report is a direct response to this crisis, with recommendations designed to protect councils and ensure the long-term sustainability of our stormwater infrastructure.
Our proposed reforms, including a new framework for assessing Lifecycle Costs, Maintainability, Safety, and Constructability (LSCM), would force these critical factors to be considered before a device is approved and handed over. This ensures transparency and allows councils to understand the true, whole-of-life cost of the assets they are inheriting.
For too long, the long-term burden placed on local councils has been an afterthought in stormwater design. The NSW SQID Taskforce Report brings this issue to the forefront, outlining how current practices create these significant, unfunded liabilities. We strongly encourage council engineers, asset managers, and public works officials to review the detailed findings, validate them with your own experiences, and provide feedback to help shape a more equitable system.
We have commenced a broad consultation process across industry, government, councils and industries. We are aiming to prepare a feedback supplement at the conclusion of the consultation period.
Review the consultation draft, Volume One, outlining recommendations, available on the Stormwater 2030 website.
Submit feedback via the Taskforce Feedback Form by Monday, December 1, 2025.
