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SUBMISSION BY ACTIVE COMMUNITY TEAM ON THE DRAFT HELENSBURGH PLAN - Part 1
The Active Community Team believes that there is a need for the establishment to an Illawarra escarpment park along the whole of the escarpment including the environmentally sensitive area of the Royal National Park near Helensburgh. It is of concern that the integrity of¨ the Royal National Park, Australia's oldest national park, will be threatened by the urban expansion of Helensburgh in the headwaters of the Hacking River.
We note the SPCC's comments in its TCM Hacking Report of 1989 that substantial urban development in Helensburgh would result in an unacceptable impact on the Hacking River system because even with the best practicable means of treating urban runoff, that whilst pollution¨ can be reduced significantly, it cannot be completely controlled. The SPCC acknowledges that the water quality of the Hacking has degraded in recent years - with bacteria levels being too high for swimming in some areas.
There is a great need to preserve the green buffer between Sydney and Wollongong that the Royal National Park provides. Each year millions of visitors use the Royal National Park & in addition Helensburgh is regarded as one of most scenic parts of the NSW coastline.
It is likely that the proposed development and urban expansion of Helensburgh will substantially threaten the ecosystem of the Royal National Park in a number of ways:¨
(i) Degrade Water Quality
Increased urban runoff over hard impermeable surfaces, ie from gardens, motor vehicles and domestic pets - including sediments and suspended solids, organic matter, plant nutrients - nitrogen and phosphorus, greases, oils, metals, pesticides, herbicides, fertilisers, noxious & exotic plant seeds carried down from the catchment waterways.¨
(ii) Soil Erosion
Due to high intensity rainfall and steep terrain severe soil erosion is probable when the clearing that accompanies urban expansion gets underway. It is also likley that the problem will be compounded by the¨ erosion of creek banks. These risks are exacerbated by the predominance of the sandstone geology.
(iii) Increased Siltation of Waterways Such siltation will lead to an increase in weeds and thus reduce water¨ recreation at Audley.
(iv) Downstream Flooding arising from siltation effects.
This is of particular concern to Otford residents.
(v) Destruction of Rainforest Gullies due to diversion of watercourses
In particular those changes which would be necessary to construct pollution ponds in Gills Creek area.
(vi) Bushland Degraded
In areas surrounding the proposed housing bushland would be degraded by fire hazard reduction control burning - firetrails, soil erosion, weed invasion, use of pesticides and other toxic chemicals, rubbish dumping. All of these would have the potential to cause loss of rainforest understorey species and thus the eventual collapse of rainforest ecosystems.
(vii) Increased Wildlife Kills
The increased traffic movements, feral animals, reduced habitat area and isolation of individual wildlife corridors, bushfires - both controlled & unplanned - and the introduction of various diseases, eg¨ enteric, will have a devastating effect on wildlife.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Allow only environmentally acceptable urban consolidation within the existing urban zones so that environmental degradation is limited.
2. Minimise clearance of bushland.
3. Maintenance of Environmental Protection Zone 7(h)- Hacking.
4. Make all discharges to the Hacking comply with the Protected Waters¨ standard, including stormwater discharges
5. Add all natural lands in the Hacking River catchment to the Royal National Park, linking by wildlife corridors, the Illawarra escarpment¨ parklands to national park.
6. Extend the Illawarra Escarpment State Recreation Area from the Hacking River Catchment to connect with existing parklands - so as to permanently protect the bushland between Sydney & Wollongong.
The Active Community Team believes that there is a need for the for the establishment of an Illawarra escarpment park along the whole of the escarpment including the environmentally sensitive area of the Royal National Park near Helensburgh.
It is of great concern that the integrity of the Royal National Park, Australia's oldest national park, will be threatened by the urban expansion of Helensburgh in the headwaters of the Hacking River - an intrinsic element of the ecosystem of the Royal National Park. We believe that there is a great need to preserve the green buffer between Sydney and Wollongong that the Royal provides.
Given the State Government's policy on urban consolidation it would seem questionable to develop such an area as Helensburgh, when the adjacent Menai region can more easily accomodate a greater population increase. Not surprisingly local residents in Helensburgh fear the possibility of further expansion, ie that the current proposal is only¨ the beginning of development - with possible subsequent expansion of 20000 to 30000 to get a better return on the financial investment in the provision of infrastructure and services.
1. INTRODUCTION
The Royal National Park is one of Australia's oldest and most important conservation reserves. It contains a great diversity of plant communities with many rare plants and scientifically important habitats - rainforests, dunefields, wetlands - considered to be one of¨ the most botanically diverse areas of its size in the world.
2. INTERNATIONAL DEFINITION OF NATIONAL PARK - IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (I.U.C.N.) officially defined a national park in 1969 as a relatively large area
* where one or several ecosystems are not materially altered by human exploitation and occupation, where plant and animal species, geomorphological sites and habitats are of special scientific, educative and recreative interest or which contains a natural landscape of great beauty; and
* where the highest competent authority of the country has taken steps to prevent or eliminate as soon as possible exploitation or occupation in the whole area and to enforce effectively the respect of ecological, geomorphological or aesthetic features which have led to its establishment; and
* where visitors are allowed to enter under special conditions, for inspirational, educative, cultural and recreative purposes.
3. WHY THE ROYAL NATIONAL PARK IS IMPORTANT
Each year millions of visitors use the Royal National Park & Helensburgh is regarded as one of most scenic parts of the NSW coastline.
In 1985 the National Parks & Wildlife Service undertook a resource investigation of the Upper Hacking River Catchment and found a diverse¨ array of flora and fauna, including several species considered rare or¨ endangered in NSW.
The valleys below Helensburgh cradle rainforest of a diversity and complexity which can be seen nowhere else around Sydney. The forest corridor of the Hacking River Valley is the last refuge in the Sydney region of the Mountain Possum, a rare subspecies of Greater Glider, Red Necked Wallaby and Powerful Owl. These forests also form the link between the Illawarra Escarpment and the Royal National Park.
There is a great need to preserve the wildlife corridors - the forests of upper catchment link National Park with the Illawarra Escarpment and Water Board catchments. They should not be severed. Norm Robinson advocated that mammal species may cease to inhabit reserves should they become small isolated wilderness areas. Thus there is a need for a system of corridors to aid in making possible mammal movements between all reserves and other areas of significant biological value.¨
Areas such as the Royal National Park are vital as stated by the former minister Paul Landa in his foreword to "Australia's 100 years of National Parks" :
* the pressure of modern life and the highly urbanised environment of the majority of Australians have created a need for open space and natural areas
* people have gained increasing leisure time and mobility, enabling them to to use natural areas for pleasure and inspiration
* scientific and artistic studies have revealed the fascinating distinctiveness of the Australian landscape and its wildlife
* the emergence of the science of ecology has shown the interrelationships between wildlife and habitat.
4. DEGRADATION
HC (Nugget) Coombs, a former Governor of the Reserve Bank, in his book¨ "The Return of Scarcity - Strategies for an Economic Future" stated that where people modify or change a natural environment they can, by ignoring its character and relationships and the limitations they impose on change, set up processes by which it is utterly destroyed and becomes useless to humans as well as to other species for which it¨ has provided a habitat.¨
Given the IUCN definition quoted previously it is of considerable concern that the proposed development and urban expansion of Helensburgh will substantially threaten the ecosystem of the Royal National Park in a number of ways:¨
(i) Degrade Water Quality
Increased urban runoff over hard impermeable surfaces, ie from gardens, motor vehicles and domestic pets - including sediments and suspended solids, organic matter, plant nutrients - nitrogen and phosphorus, greases, oils, metals, pesticides, herbicides, fertilisers, noxious & exotic plant seeds carried down from the catchment waterways.¨
(ii) Soil Erosion
Due to high intensity rainfall and steep terrain severe soil erosion is probable when the clearing that accompanies urban expansion gets underway. It is also likley that the problem will be compounded by the¨ erosion of creek banks. These risks are exacerbated by the predominance of the sandstone geology.
(iii) Increased Siltation of Waterways
Such siltation will lead to an increase in weeds and thus reduce water¨ recreation at Audley.
(iv) Downstream Flooding arising from siltation effects.
This is of particular concern to Otford residents.
(v) Destruction of Rainforest Gullies due to diversion of watercourses
In particular those changes which would be necessary to construct the pollution ponds in the Gills Creek area.¨
(vi) Bushland Degraded
In areas surrounding the proposed housing bushland would be degraded by fire hazard reduction control burning - firetrails, soil erosion, weed invasion, use of pesticides and other toxic chemicals, rubbish dumping. All of these would have the potential to cause loss of rainforest understorey species and thus the¨ eventual collapse of rainforest ecosystems.
(vii) Increased Wildlife Kills
The increased traffic movements, feral animals, reduced habitat area and isolation of individual wildlife corridors, bushfires - both controlled and unplanned - and the introduction of various diseases, eg enteric, will have a devastating effect on wildlife.
5. POOR PRIOR PERFORMANCE
We note the inability in the past to effectively police or prevent various acts of what can only be described as environmental vandalism in areas in or around Helensburgh in the northern suburbs:
- tree clearing in Otford
- inability to successfully prosecute where trees have been removed
illegally
- already problems with exotic weeds and siltation
- pollution from Metropolitan Colliery & Coalcliff coke works
- pollution of waterways from leachate emanating from garbage tip at Helensburgh
6. VARIOUS CONCERNS 6.1 Water Quality - SPCC & Water & Research Centre
We note the SPCC's conclusion in the Hacking Total Catchment Management Report - January 1989 that substantial urban development in¨ Helensburgh would result in an unacceptable impact on the Hacking River system because even with the best practicable means of treating urban runoff such as trash racks, gross pollutant traps and permanent stormwater pollution control ponds, pollution can be reduced significantly but not completely controlled. Also of concern to the Society is the limited time period of seven weeks over which the SPCC conducted the study for the Investigation into the Impact of Urban Development at Helensburgh on Water Quality of the Hacking River. It is understood that normally such a study would be conducted over at least 18 months, but that the time period was reduced at the behest of¨ Wollongong City Council. Not surprisingly then the Canberra based Water Research Centre identified major shortcomings in the SPCC report¨ on Water Quality of the Hacking. Further in its Hacking TCM report the¨ SPCC acknowledged that whilst pollution would be a problem in wet weather it could also be expected that problems with algal and weed growth could occur in dry weather. The SPCC also acknowledged that the¨ water quality of the Hacking has degraded in recent years - with bacteria levels being too high for swimming in some areas.¨
6.2 Rainfall Intensities Underestimated
Bryant of Wollongong University's Uniadvice has claimed that the rainfall figures used in the SPCC's Helensburgh investigations have been underestimated by a factor of 250% for 1:100 year events for teh maximum rainfalls possible in the Helensburgh region. This seriously undermines the credibility of any calculations, designs etc for runoff, flooding and detention ponds based on such serious underestimations.
6.3 Detention Ponds Questioned - Adequacy, Destruction of Bushland & Aboriginal Archaeological Sites
There is great concern at the adequacy of detention ponds given high rainfall and steep terrain. Further there is the critique of Sinclair Knight & Partners proposals by Short Nichols & Flentje in which they assert that the detention ponds will not effectively maintain or reduce the levels of nutrients into the Hacking because of design deficiencies and also because of probable low retentive capacity of local sediments. There is also the proposed tearing up of bushland and¨ destruction of aboriginal archaeological sites in order to construct pollution ponds at Gills Creek.
6.4 Land & Environment Court Ruling - 7(G) Lands in Fords Rd Thirroul
The recent ruling in the NSW Land & Environment Court re the MILTONBROOK 7(G) Lands in Fords Rd Thirroul raises questions re the intentions and effectiveness of Environment Protection Living 7(g) zoning. There must be doubts as to the effectiveness of this zoning for Helensburgh as well.
6.5 Village Character of Helensburgh
According to Wollongong City Council's social plan 46.8% of residents moved to Helensburgh because of its village character. Such a village character refers not only to the surrounding bushland and rural "feel", but also a sociological aspect, ie a sense of belonging and also of "looking out" for each other. Massive urban expansion will destroy this village lifestyle.
6.6 CANS (Community Alliance Northern Suburbs)
At public meetings conducted in Helensburgh by CANS in preparation for¨ the LEP 38 revision there was concern that the escarpment rim was not sufficiently well protected and that it should become part of the Illawarra State Recreation Area. There was also a strongly felt view that residential densities should be kept low and that whilst the current open space was considered adequate it was not maintained satisfactorily by WCC - which augured poorly for the future.
6.7 Industrial Aspects
There appears to be considerable misconception that high tech industries are clean and non-polluting. Sadly the experiences in the USA's Silicon Valley, heartland of the world's computer industry, has shown otherwise with the high costs of cleaning up groundwaters because of discharges of waters containing toxic chemicals used in the high-tech industries of computer component manufacture, eg electroplating of circuit boards, cleaning/degreasing procedures.
6.8 WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR INCREASED MAINTENANCE COSTS?
Who is going to pay for the increased road maintenance costs and also for the maintenance of the detention ponds? Will it mean levies on an area already subject to high local government rating levels?
Authorised - Kerrie Christian
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