COMMENT: What Mr Collier should spend a little time thinking about is that quite apart from the raking dredging up a whole lot of 'sanitary products' lying in wait in the mud, the process liberated enough toxins and heavy metals to threaten marine life all the way down to the estuary’s mouth.
He is silent about such things and resists the evidence that the silt has been there for millennia and that since colonial times so-called management practices have been serially defeated. Even Lachlan Macquarie got stuck in the mud in 1811.
So, somewhat appropriately, his letter was published on April 1.
If you are going to comment about an environmental issue it is quite a good idea to look at it from multiple vantage points. If we are to do that he might have admonished the City of Launceston for imagining the river as an open sewer for as long as there has been a colonial settlement at the confluence of two rivers and an estuary.
However, M Collier holds another view along with his cronies down at the Flat Earth Society.
Groom the mud by all means but let’s not stir it up!
However, Estelle Ross is quite right in giving Launceston’s recalcitrant Councillors and GM a stir-up over Council inappropriately giving way to the GM and allowing shonky planning decisions to go unchallenged. He said he wouldn’t use the power, so why grant it?
COVID-19is telling us loud and clear where all the waywardness is and we might see letters yet like Estelle’s and perhaps more informed ones from Mr Collier.
T. Alen
Tamar Raking Waste April 8
JIM Collier once again attempts to rewrite history with his lack of recall (The Examiner, April 1)
He should recall how the Flood Authority and Launceston City Council had to be bailed out to complete the flood levies.
I would not lobby for another million-dollar report into the silt. I did successfully lobby the Attorney General for the money which actually saved businesses and residents of Invermay in 2016. When the Attorney said to me that he had already promised me millions for the levy, I told him there was no point in having part of a levy that argument worked.
I would not lobby for funds to rake the Tamar, which I knew would not work.
Raking has wasted millions of yours and my taxpayer funds as anyone with an ounce of nous, can see at low tide.
Geoff Lyons, Riverside.
Launceston City Council
I AM very concerned to read in (The Examiner, April 6) that decisions for planning applications could bypass the Launceston City Council meetings.
Instead, three people, the CEO, community and place general manager and the city development officer who are not elected representatives of the community, have been given the power to pass or reject DA's.
It is certainly not democratic and there is no need for this to happen as nowadays teleconferencing is widely available.
Estelle Ross, Riverside.
Trevallyn Dam Examiner April 1
ROSS Warren struggles "to comprehend how the commissioning of Trevallyn Power Scheme in 1955 has had such a dramatic detrimental effect on siltation in the Tamar estuary" (The Sunday Examiner, March 24).
The answer is simple; reducing freshwater flows through the Cataract Gorge (Launceston's greatest natural asset) has allowed salinity to encroach further into the Tamar's upper reaches thus permitting earlier flocculation of the suspended sediment.
Reduced flows have also eliminated natural scouring of the sediment once derived from historic South Esk River flows, as it has with the natural flushing of toxic contaminants from the Yacht Basin.
Additionally, and according to Hydro Tasmania's 1999 Environmental Flow Review, reduced water flows brought about by Trevallyn Dam have changed the entire eco-system of the Cataract Gorge confirmed by the fact that macro-invertebrates in the gorge at the time of the Review had reduced by an incredible 58 per cent; goodness knows how bad the situation is today?
Trevallyn Dam has had a catastrophic and devastating effect on the Cataract Gorge and the Tamar's upper reaches; no doubt whatsoever.
No comments:
Post a Comment