A well-respected Dubbo businessman and grazier has called for the state government to halt its plans to build the River Street Bridge.
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Greg Kilby said the NSW government's River Street Bridge proposal would only cause traffic congestion and would not do anything about flood mitigation.
He said he hoped newly-minted Dubbo MP Dugald Saunders would take heed of his narrow winning margin and listen to residents concerns over the project.
"Hopefully Dugald will work for the people and see sense with this bridge project," Mr Kilby said.
"He has too narrow a margin for him to lose faith with local voters."
Mr Kilby said a three-pronged approach of small dams, a bridge at Troy and a Dubbo bypass would be a better way to spend the $140 million budgeted for the River Street bridge.
"This $140 million should be spent on a smaller bridge at Troy like the one that is over the Talbragar River, a bypass and on storing water up the river to prevent a flood and for the use of farmers and the environment," he said.
"The current plan is a massive waste of money. I am sure in all the little tributaries in the Macquarie between Dubbo and Lithgow they could spend the millions they are putting aside for the River Street Bridge to build a multitude of small dams.
"The bridge is supposed to be about flood mitigation, but my idea would mean if we did get another big rain the water would be held in these dams, not flood the city and then when the rain stopped the water could be useful instead of just draining away."
Mr Kilby said his proposal could solve the dual problems of flood and traffic mitigation.
"The current proposal wastes $140 million on only half solving one problem, it'll actually increase traffic congestion into Dubbo," he said.
"We need to work in a bypass to the plan. The bypass at Orange that took them 20 odd years to build is so successful they are now thinking about building another one, we still haven't got one, we still need a bypass on the west side of Dubbo.
"We have to get the traffic out of Dubbo.
"If they think they need to spend $140 million for a once in a ten-year flood that's crazy. If they keep water stored, in dams, well that's the flood mitigation, the bridge at Troy and then a bypass will do the job of traffic mitigation."