Cartoons of the Week

David Pope

David Rowe

Cathy Wilcox

On Saturday 25 March 2023 are you voting for the Clarence River system and the towns, villages and businesses which depend on its waters? Here are some of the community groups & candidates who think you should

 

Nymboida River, one of the twenty-four tributaries of the Clarence River and the principal source of drinking water for most residents in Clarence Valley and Coffs Harbour City local government areas. IMAGE: Arden E, YouTube 2015

The Clarence Valley’s rich biodiverse landscapes have nurtured and supported generations beyond count and down the years communities — as well as the grass roots organisations they support — across the Clarence River Catchment have worked hard to protect that which gives them life and livelihoods.

Because in places such as the Clarence Valley with its variable river systems; the aesthetic, environmental, social, cultural and economic values of its communities are intertwined. Healthy rivers, clear running creeks, intact temperate & subtropical close & open forests along with ancient remnants of the Gondwanaland forests, arable soils found in smaller valleys and the larger floodplain, as well as a long coastal zone providing tourism opportunities, all combine to provide a population of est. 54,180 men, women and children living in the catchment area with a solid local economy which keeps the local government area vibrant and its over 4,000 businesses productive. Businesses whose products and services make up est. 17 per cent of the wider Northern Rivers regional economy. [Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021, idcommunity 2021]

Make no mistake. The Clarence Valley relies on the fact that its air is fresh, free-flowing waters clean, main primary industries sustainable and its landscapes pleasing to the eye of tourists. For without those four things the Clarence Valley regional economy would not be worth anything like the over $2 billion it is consistently valued at despite the ongoing pressures of war in Ukraine and global pandemic [National Institute of Economic and Industry Research 2021].

It is also not just Clarence Valley residents that rely on good stewardship being applied to land and waters within the Clarence catchment area. An est. 78,738 people and 6,174 businesses in Coffs Harbour City local government area rely on the urban water infrastructure within Clarence Valley local government area to supply them with town water.

However, constantly growing population pressure and the commercial interests of often large-scale and/or state-sponsored industries (particularly construction, mining & forestry) has seen Clarence catchment landscapes being altered in ways that are becoming destructive.

Forestry now covers 20 per cent of Clarence River Catchment land and by 2022 there were a total of 18 existing mineral and gold mining leases, along with more than 41 mining exploration leases, in the catchment area. [NSW Government, Industry NSW, 2022] It should be noted that mining leases are on the traditional lands of three First Nations peoples.

Under threat are the streams, creeks and rivers which feed the longest coastal river on the Australian east coast, the Clarence River. Also under threat are the remaining tracts of native forest, as well as the tree cover on the Clarence Catchment’s steep hills which help anchor rock and soil to the hillsides and prevent it sliding down and choking the waterways that weave their way among them.

Since the 1990s there have been a number of government contracted reports concerning the Clarence Basin and its waterways. All have highlighted concerns still held today and largely unaddressed – the risks that mining activity, large scale forestry, soil erosion and water turbidity pose to the environment and waterways of the Clarence Basin.

Right now in March 2023 Clarence electorate residents have the opportunity to make their voices heard when they cast their votes this coming Saturday at the NSW State Election.

On Friday morning 17 March 2023 the Clarence Catchment Alliance (CCA) — a non-partisan, not-for-profit, community volunteer group established in 2018 as a response to increased mining exploration activity — held a press conference close to Whiting Beach, Yamba.

Clarence Catchment Alliance had invited members of the media, sitting MPs, candidates standing at next week’s state election, representatives from other community & business groups, as well as members of the public as observers, to this event.

The purpose of the press conference was to draw attention to the growing alarm about mineral extraction projects within the Clarence River catchment and any expansion of this activity across its 24 sub-catchments.

The event began with a Welcome to Country by Yaegl emerging elder Diane Randall, the press conference taking place on traditional Yaegl lands.

It was followed by an introduction from Shae Fleming one of the CCA organisers and then went onto comments by various speakers from other groups including the Clarence Environment Centre and the Yamba District Chamber of Commerce. Brief presentations were made by candidates standing in the Clarence electorate as well as candidates standing in Coffs Harbour and Lismore electorates. There was a general consensus that the waters of the Clarence River catchment area needed to be protected.

Unfortunately the Nationals candidate for Clarence, Richie Williamson, did not attend. However, given the strong pro-mining, pro-barely regulated land clearing, pro-native timber harvesting and pro-state and private forestry policies and practices of the Nationals as partner in successive NSW Coalition governments, that is hardly surprising.

What was surprising was the rider added by the Labor candidate for Clarence to his general support of protecting the Clarence catchment area. Leon Ankersmit stated that the Labor Party would not allow him to sign the CCA pledge of support as the party was in favour of mining in Northern New South Wales.

The following is a brief summary of concerns articulated by some of those that spoke at the press conference, in no particular order.

JOHN EDWARDS (Clarence Environment Centre): It’s not coal or iron that worries me – it’s heavy metal mining. Ore get trucked from mine sites but processing minerals begins at the mine. The evaporation ponds produce a toxic sludge which permanently contaminates the soil and remediation is merely covering that soil with more soil. Leaving a time bomb behind when the mining company leaves. (Signed the CCA pledge)

SUE HIGGINSON (Greens MLA): The community here worked hard to shut down the Timbarra Gold Mine after it leaked cyanide into the Clarence River. However mining leases are still being granted in river catchments. Local seafood, dairy, sugar cane, livestock, crops, and tourism, and the industries that serve them, need clean water. (Signed the CCA pledge)

SHAE FLEMING (Clarence Coastal Alliance): We already have healthy water based industries here. They need protecting. (Signed the CCA pledge)

JAMES ALLAN (current President, Yamba Chamber of Commerce): Degradation of our waterways leads to degradation of our businesses. I support No Mines in the Clarence catchment. There are few jobs in mining. Re-opening the Drake mine would only create fifty jobs. (Signed the CCA pledge)

BRETT DUROUX (Indigenous Australia Party candidate for Clarence): I grew up in Cangai, raised in the old ways. The bush is a place of beauty and healing for so many people. Miners needs are not as important as our needs. My response to proposals to mine in the Clarence Valley is “NEVER!” (Signed the CCA pledge)

NICKI LEVI (Independent candidate for Clarence): Water is sacred, water is precious, water is life. Our priorities should be to protect the air in the Richmond Valley and water in the Clarence Valley. (Signed the CCA pledge)

DEBRA NOVAK (Independent candidate for Clarence & current Clarence Valley councillor): If elected I pledge to lobby hard for a moratorium on mineral mining just as we successfully did with coal seam gas mining. Nothing is more important than protecting the water. (Signed the CCA pledge)

GREG CLANCY (Greens candidate for Clarence & current Clarence Valley Council Deputy-Mayor): I have been protesting against threats to the rivers for a long time. Mining in this wonderful environment is “not on”. Parts of the Mann River are already dead zones because of previous mining ventures. (Signed the CCA pledge)

LEON ANKERSMIT (Labor candidate for Clarence): I’m proud of the sustainable industries that rely on a healthy river like prawning and fishing. Our land is precious and its such an important job to protect our river. (Refused to sign CCA pledge)

MARK RAYNOR (Legalise Cannabis Party candidate for Clarence): We need to find new industries and new crops not start new mines. (Signed the CCA pledge)

TIM NOTT (Greens candidate for Coffs Harbour): Mining is being done the wrong way - mining near waterways produces industrial level pollution. (Signed the CCA pledge)

ALISON WATERS (Animal Justice Party candidate for NSW Upper House representing Northern NSW): They are our waterways and our catchments. We need to protect them. (Signed the CCA pledge)

VANESSA ROSAYRO (Animal Justice Party candidate for Lismore): Mining just doesn’t affect our lives. It affects marine and plant life and the lives of local animals. (Signed the CCA pledge)

Background

"What has biodiversity ever done for us? Well for a start, it has provided nearly all the oxygen on the planet. Without oxygen, all animals including us, would be dead within minutes."

 

IMAGE: The Young Naturalist Australia

Environmental activist Lauriston Muirhead writing in The Border Mail, 23 November 2022:

Our numbers alone will not protect us

Biodiversity is the diversity of life found in an ecosystem. The more biodiverse, the more balanced and resilient the ecosystem.

A diverse ecosystem is more resistant to shocks and will last longer.

What has biodiversity ever done for us? Well for a start, it has provided nearly all the oxygen on the planet. Without oxygen, all animals including us, would be dead within minutes.

The oxygen was created by cyanobacteria that were able to live in an early atmosphere without oxygen.

Cyanobacteria still work in green plants using the sun's energy to turn the CO2 animals breathe out, back into oxygen (and carbon to help them grow). This is photosynthesis and all life depends on it. Remember, all our food is either plants or animals that ate plants.

The biodiversity of the planet provides all our food, as well as much of our clothing, building materials and erosion protection.

OK, apart from the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and shelter, what did biodiversity ever do for us?

Well, there are the medicines. Where would we be without the willow tree that gave us aspirin or the mould that gave us penicillin.

We can now make many drugs synthetically - but without nature's blueprints, we would not have been able to create these and so many other medicines.

Who knows how many more "cures" exist in the plants and animals of the world?

Our tool-making ability has turned our sticks into bulldozers, our stones into bombs and our boomerangs into bomber aircraft. We have the power to hunt not just one animal but entire species to extinction.

If we think our numbers will protect us, just take the example of the passenger pigeon.

In the 19th century, there were more passenger pigeons than people on the planet. By 1914, they had been hunted to extinction.

We are losing species through direct killing and habitat destruction - now exacerbated by human-induced climate change.

If we keep on playing "species roulette", someday, one of the extinction bullets we pick up might have the name Homo sapiens written on it. We must do more to preserve all species in order to preserve our own.

So go forth, and make the world more biodiverse.

IMAGE: Living Links

On the northern side of the Clarence River estuary, the little coastal village of Iluka is battling poor urban planning and an inadequate drainage network in a changing regional climate

Clarence Environment Centre, Winter newsletter – 2022, excerpt:

Who could have predicted that?

They have to be kidding!

The overworked phrase, “who could have seen this coming”, has been used by all levels of government to excuse the debacle which was the response to the recent flooding event across the Northern Rivers, and has been rightly ridiculed.

For 40 years, the world’s scientific community, through the UN, has been warning us that the changing climate will generate more frequent and more extreme weather events, and have begged the world’s governments to take appropriate action, with little success.

The failure of those governments to make meaningful attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is inexcusable. However, to fail to plan for those forecast catastrophic weather events, verges on criminal neglect. The recent flooding saw lives and property lost, businesses forced to close, and rendered thousands homeless.

In the Clarence Valley, the response to 4 decades of warnings about the inevitability of increased flooding. has been zero, something that even this latest disaster seems unlikely to change.

In fact, Council’s first act when reviewing the cause of ponding in some areas in Iluka, was to examine past rainfall data, leading to the hardly surprising conclusion that: “The significant rainfall has led to a saturated catchment and high-water table, exacerbating the time taken for water to disperse”.

Council’s statement continues with: “There has been no event or combination of events since records began that comes close to the rainfall totals recorded at Yamba”, going on to say: “We need to be aware that the most efficiently designed drainage systems are not built to cope with rainfall totals equal to that recently experienced”.

Ponding problems in Iluka from recent rains will only worsen with the clearing of forested land and replacing it with roof-tops, concrete and bitumen

Having had over 40 years to plan for just such an event, we have to ask, why haven’t adequate drainage systems been designed, and required to be installed in all new developments?

Alongside one of Iluka’s ponding problem areas, a 140-lot subdivision is currently converting 14ha of bushland into roofs, concrete and bitumen, all combining to channel rainfall, at speed, through an inadequate stormwater system, directly into those ponding hotspots.

The above image was of the condition of that housing development after the water had subsided. Laughingly advertised as “Birrigan Iluka Beach”, despite being nowhere near the waterfront, it has already changed water flows beginning with the removal of the forest which has led to the unprecedented ponding, prompting this Facebook comment (see right). 

Council should be taking its “Climate Emergency” declaration seriously, and plan accordingly, but they aren’t, with multiple floodplain developments underway or in the planning stages in Iluka and Yamba.

Interesting time ahead!

Millionaire property developer Gordon Merchant's latest Yamba DA thwarted and next NRPP meeting may be deferred again re Hometown Australia's multi-dwelling Yamba DA

 

Image: Google Earth

NOTICE OF PUBLIC MEETING CANCELLATION –NORTHERN REGIONAL PLANNING PANEL

The following meeting has been cancelled:

· Panel reference number PPSNTH‐31 – Clarence Valley – SUB2019/0030 ‐ 52‐54 Miles St, Yamba ‐310 Lot Staged Residential Subdivision and ancillary infrastructure works including drainage reserves and the creation of a residue lot

The meeting was to be held on:

Wednesday, 21 September 2022 at 4pm

By teleconference

The meeting has been cancelled because the applicant has withdrawn the development application….

BACKGROUND

Clarence Valley Independent, 14 September 2022:

The Development Application DA for the $32 million staged residential subdivision located at the yet to be formed Miles Street, which runs east off Carrs Drive, was lodged with Clarence Valley Council CVC on behalf of Kahuna No 1 Pty Ltd, owners of the 42.5-hectare site.

The 850 metres by 500 metre site fronts Carrs Drive, with the to be constructed Miles Street and St James Primary School to the north, and Golding Street to the east.

CVC’s assessment report prepared by town planner James Hamilton notes the Kahuna Yamba Gardens DA was on public exhibition twice, with eight submissions received in the first exhibition period and 79 submissions from the most recent period.

“The Council received a total of 87 individual submissions, comprising 87 objections and no submissions in support of the proposed development,” Mr Hamilton’s report stated.

“The submissions raised issues relating to urban design, flooding, stormwater, traffic, filling, environment, services, climate change and sea level rise, heritage and impacts on the town.”

The assessment on the DA by Mr Hamilton listed six factors, including two endangered species, for refusal.

These factors for refusal included that The Rural Fire Service could not support the development under Section 100B of the Rural Fires Act 1997, and the fact the site contains two listed endangered flora species being Rotala tripartita and Spider orchid.

“Sufficient information has not been provided to enable a determination on how the proposed development will not likely have a serious and irreversible impact on these two species,” the assessment stated.

The DA was also found by council to be inconsistent with the General Residential, Flood Planning and Earthworks clauses of the Clarence Valley Local Environment Plan 2011.

“The proposal is inconsistent with the aims of Clarence Valley Local Environmental Plan 2011 as it has not been satisfactorily demonstrated that the proposed development will enable the sustainable development of the site, adequately protect areas of high ecological value and maintain the character of Yamba township,” the assessment stated.

CVC’s assessment also found the DA was inconsistent with numerous parts of the Clarence Valley Residential Zones Development Control Plan 2011, including Floodplain Management Controls, Sustainable Water Controls and Urban Release Area Controls…..

Watch this space for the next development application Mr. Merchant lodges on this land.

Meanwhile over in the Parkes Menai- Hometown Australia camp.....

It appears that Hometown Australia Management Pty Ltd's est. $33.9 million development application DA2021/0558 for 138 dwellings, an exhibition home and community facilities at 8 Park Ave, Yamba, may be deferred yet again by the Northern Regional Planning Panel (NRPP) as the NSW Dept. of Planning and Environment has not yet submitted its review of the flooding and risk evacuation procedures supplied by Hometown at the request of NRPP.

This is a proposed development with an unhappy history. The original land clearing and landfill under a Parkes Developments DA resulted in the unapproved felling of a significant number of native trees in the adjoining dedicated Wattle Park.  

Further, although the original land fill on 8 Park Ave is estimated to have reached RL2.8AHD so that the site only has a 1% (1 in 100) chance in any given year of being surrounded by 2.08 to 2.51 metres of flood water, the stormwater flows from this approx. 6.65ha lot enter an inadequate on-site and extended drainage network. 

Resulting in situations like this for established homes now at a comparatively altered ground level approx. 2.8m lower than the very large Park Ave lot.

Extract from a submission to Clarence Valley Council,
28 October 2021 

Extract from a submission to Clarence Valley Council,
29 October 2021 - open ditch drain

Extract from "West Yamba Update", West Yamba Information,
21 June 2022 - before and after height of common boundary
with 8 Park Ave, Yamba

This is a situation which during prolonged/high rainfall events is likely to exacerbate the 2-5% chance of mixed stormwater-riverine water inundation in adjacent streets and across a number of residential properties. As occurred in the March 2022.

And the tale of Rous County Council decision making under new pro-dam majority continues......

Echo, 21 February 2022: 

During last week’s Rous County Council (RCC) meeting, Cr Big Rob spoke of contact he had with Professor Stuart White regarding the proposed Dunoon Dam. 

 Professor White is the Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at UTS in Sydney where he leads a team of researchers who create change towards sustainable futures through independent, project-based research. 

 With over twenty years experience in sustainability research, Professor White’s work focuses on achieving sustainability outcomes at least cost for a range of government, industry and community clients across Australia and internationally. 

The Echo spoke to Professor White who made a late video submission to Rous that missed the deadline. A representative of Rous said it was too late to be screened in public access and was ‘forwarded to all Councillors on the morning of the Council meeting for their info’. The rep also mistakingly thought the video was a submission from the Northern Rivers Water Alliance who already had a space in Public Access. 

Rous County Council meeting 

During the meeting Cr Rob did not give Councillors all of the information he received from Professor White. 

At the meeting, Cr Rob said: ‘I circulated an email overnight relating to the experts that have been relied on – Professor Stuart White for example. You know, his position was the cost and when I made inquiries with Professor White, he finally agreed that yes, that dam should be considered. So if you take the cost out of it, then his position [is] all options on the table, the dam must be considered because that is one of the options.’ 

The Echo asked Professor White about his conversation with Cr Rob because Cr Rob’s comments seemed to be at odds with the information Professor White has been giving other interested parties. 

‘I have not spoken to Cr Big Rob,’ said Professor White. ‘I only had email correspondence. 

‘My position on the Dunoon Dam is clear and I’ve been public about it: it is too expensive, too risky, not useful for the purpose it is intended for, and not needed within the planning horizon. This is before considering the environmental and Aboriginal heritage risks.’ 

Time to rule out dam 

Professor White said that this does not mean the Dunoon Dam, or any supply option should not be considered and investigated alongside other options. ‘It is just that under any reasonable analysis it would be rejected. The proponents have already had a chance to make their case, at great public expense, and my view is that this case has not been made, so it is now reasonable to rule the Dunoon Dam option out.’ 

‘My understanding of the decision by Rous last year was to reject it primarily due to the Aboriginal heritage considerations, which are of course very important and remain very important.’ 

The Echo does not know if any Rous Councillors saw this submission before they voted 6 to 2 to put the dam back on the table.  [my yellow highlighting]

BACKGROUND

NORTH COAST VOICES, FRIDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2022 

Rous County Council and that Dunoon Dam proposal now risen from the dead