By Mairi Petersen
SHELLHARBOUR — For the past ten years the right-wing Labor-controlled Council here has been promoting a plan to destroy a 780-metre popular family beach at South Shellharbour near Wollongong by building a boat harbour.
In December 1993 the Council, with two independents dissenting, endorsed a feasibility study submitted by developer Lang Walker. The mayor and the developer signed a legal agreement which will be kept secret — even from the councillors — for 14 years.
Walker was invited to prepare an environmental impact statement, to be paid for by developing 341 lots on council-owned land, with council and the developer sharing the profits.
In March 1994 Walker sold 55% of the shares in his development company for $200 million, from which, according to the June 10 Sydney Morning Herald, he got a personal benefit of $137.9 million. In the prospectus issued to potential shareholders, revenues from the Shellharbour development were estimated to be $300 million. Whilst the prospectus says that profits will be shared equally with council, the Shellharbour town clerk is on record as saying that there will be no income for council for about eight years.
Walker's investment will be only $10 million, to be repaid with 12% interest, over the first four years of development. The whole scheme will be financed by the privatisation of 229 hectares of public land to produce 3200 crowded and tiny lots from 215 hectares of residential land. The local public golf course will be moved from flat land near the sea to a hilly site three kilometres away, with the old site sold as building lots.
The feasibility study plans to destroy a 19-hectare salt marsh wetland, home to 55 species of birds, in order to build, for $28 million, a 350-berth harbour for luxury yachts in what could only be described as a mudhole. It will be linked to the sea by a 200-metre wide channel through the beach. The channel is to be protected by stone breakwaters causing currents that will erode most of the remaining beach.
Other plans include a commercial area adjoining the harbour, to include the building of shops, a yacht club and a hotel on a former rubbish dump area. The site produces methane gas and leachate leaks. In addition to domestic and builders' rubbish it contains ammonium, bicarbonate, nitrate, zinc, lead and manganese refuse.
The boat harbour will pollute the sea with yacht refuse, acidic mud, leachate and urban run-off now contained by the wetland. Such pollution will destroy the offshore coral and sponge reef, now home to several endangered fish species.
The Walker Corporation's environmental impact statement will be produced by the end of September. The National Party's minister for planning has promised that he will appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate the EIS before he makes a decision on the scheme.
The prospects for rejection of the scheme are not good, particularly because Bob Carr, leader of the Labor opposition, has said not a word on this proposed environmental vandalism. Back in 1986 when he was environment minister he meekly succumbed to the pressure of his right-wing mates and rezoned the whole area, including the wetland, the beach, two playing fields and the golf course, as special residential.
There is no doubt about local opposition to the scheme. In a recent series of eight meetings of invited people, conducted by Walker Corporation, 69 people opposed the scheme with only 28 people supporting it.
In a recent council by-election, in an area which votes 75% Labor at state and federal elections, the Labor candidate was supported by the Liberal Party, the local independent councillors and the local print media. The independent anti-boatharbour candidate still got 42.4% of the vote.
The problem is how do those of us who represent the ever growing number of residents opposed to this monstrous plan get to change the minds of the 13 councillor coalition which governs Shellharbour Council and refuses to listen to any rational arguments?
[Mairi Petersen is the Chairperson of the Preserve South Shellharbour Beach Committee.]