WHEN the rain pelts down in the Longyard Homemakers Centre area off Tamworth's Goonoo Goonoo Rd, the people living opposite it and adjacent to a natural watercourse, know it won't be long before sheets of water roar by.
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For Sandra Craswell, who lives at 404 Goonoo Goonoo Rd, much of the land between her house and the new Uniting Church several hundred metres away, turns into a sea of water.
The Craswell family has owned the house for about 10 years and, Mrs Craswell said yesterday, what was formerly an attractive semi-swampland area, has been turned into an occasional flood zone.
She blames much of the problem on the development in the late 1990s of residential land in the Longyard area and especially the Homemakers Centre diagonally opposite her house.
Fortunately, when heavy falls of rain occur, as they did yesterday morning, the floodwaters do not enter the Craswell premises.
"But it's gone close and it has, on occasions, entered the yard of my neighbour whose house is behind ours," she said.
Mrs Craswell also believes the current development of the Stockland bulky goods precinct, which is due to open in less than two months, will exacerbate the problem.
Both the Homemakers and the Stockland developments represented "inappropriate developments", she said, and the thought of a week of heavy storms causes her concern.
She lodged an official complaint with the former city council several years ago "but got nowhere", although she did ring mayor James Treloar yesterday to invite him to "come out and have a look the next time it rains heavily and he promised me he would".
Tamworth Regional Council's acting environment and planning services director Paul Anderson said that when the homemakers' centre was designed and approved, the concerns of local citizens would have been taken into account. (Mr Anderson was not with the council then).
In fact, the post-development flow of stormwater was better than it had been before the homemakers' centre was established.
That improvement had been effected by the construction of detention basins.
"However," Mr Anderson said, "rain events vary from year to year and from period to period ... you do get different outcomes."
Tamworth Airport received 13mm in yesterday's rain.
