teatrea said..Have not made up my mind yet , which is weird because im a closet greenie of sorts.
Personally I would like to see some investment in big projects in this country , modern engineering boggles my mind. It also boggles my mind that Australia's last big engineering feat was the snowy hydro scheme. I rekon with the right environmental controls something like this could work , and could also create a magnet for marine life. Who knows they may be able to create some awesome new surf breaks too
obviously an investor invests in this type of thing to see a return
So what if their is another casino with lots of fools lining up to loose their money , I rekon they should build it straight of surfers parasites.
Teatree, I'm afraid I have to raise a couple of points to consider.
1) the Queensland breaks......to suggest that they are there due to man-made influences is a bit rich. Could you really say that the orientation of the snapper/green mount shoreline and natural sand flow from the tweed river would have produced poor waves? It was pretty popular before the sand bypass created superbank, as was kirra before even the first risk wall went in. Their current form might be enhanced by sand pumping or rock walls (though nobody has done the studies to see if they'd be better without them) but that's not to say engineering is responsible for them. Point danger would be quite an impressive engineering feat.
2) investment. Fair enough to want some investment, but a) is this the kind of coast you want in qld and b) do you really want one-off construction jobs ultimately financed by problem gambling? Strewth.
3) there aren't enough environmental controls in existence to make it work in the long term - you would have to try and re-engineer the engineering impacts, so then the real issue is this: can the government or community really "afford" the full cost of the project? That is, the maintenance dredging, the additional works and power and studies to stay on top of it, and then finally the fix-up costs when the developer decides they've thrown enough good money at it and leave the state of Queensland to sort out the mess?
4) marine life? It's is a common misperception - nothing lives there now so we better attract some more mainstream varieties that we understand. The place is full of life now, so why alter it? That will only bring a range of other impacts.
In my view, this is exactly the kind of short-sighted development that has created so many of the coastal development problems Queensland currently has, many of which are about to start costing Queensland a very large sum of money to manage effectively. Just ask your coastal specialists who a working in the public interest, not the developer's paid consultants.
