business
Sydney Council to Vote on Reverting Oval Stormwater Design
Ku-ring-gai Council will decide Monday whether to abandon an aggregate stormwater system and return to a concrete detention tank at Norman Griffiths Oval. The project has cost $20.2 million so far and remains incomplete more than two years after construction began.
The Sydney Morning HeraldAudio version
Tap play to generate a narrated version.
Ku-ring-gai Council will vote Monday on whether to reverse years of work on the stormwater detention system at Norman Griffiths Oval and return to the original concrete tank design. The council approved the synthetic turf project in 2020 after initially rejecting it in 2019 over environmental concerns. Construction began in March 2023 and the site has remained closed since then.
2 million. The council now projects a possible reopening as late as May 2027. Local resident Lily Choi, now 11, said the site has been unusable for years. "When I walk past with my dog and I look over here, I just feel really sad because nothing’s happened for ages, and I’ve only played on it three or so times," she said.
Internal council emails from 2021 show engineers raised concerns about the aggregate-based detention system proposed by contractor TurfOne. The council accepted the alternative design outside the original tender scope. A February 2023 review of the system was conducted by Optimal Stormwater, which had previously worked with TurfOne on the project.
Academic Andy Asquith said the arrangement raised conflict-of-interest questions. The council fired TurfOne in May 2025 and the parties are now in a legal dispute. 7 million spent to date. Optimal Stormwater general manager Murray Powell said the firm had not done anything wrong.
BildGroup chief executive Stephen Hill said the council’s claims about the detention system were incorrect and that similar designs had succeeded elsewhere.
