Botany Bay and Catchment Alliance

The Botany Bay catchment is overburdened with traffic. Regional planning maps show at the heart of the problem, Sydney Airport and Port Botany. While we can’t undo the past, we can work to improve our future.

Sydney’s 1890s road and rail networks no longer cope. No matter how much work is done on Expressways and Motorways, traffic continues to multiply like rabbits. Proposals to quadruplicate the M5 and building the M6 will not solve the problem. Gridlock is costing businessmen, like Lindsay Fox, millions as his trucking firm watches trucks in Sydney Metropolitan area slow moving carparks.

Port Botany is a major sticking point, following port approvals, with air freight from Sydney Airport adding to local problems. This traffic generator is served by a single rail track from Marrickville, on a 1920s alignment. Line duplication with a spur to Sydney Airport would help. Passenger travel would change if the rail surcharge at International and Domestic Stations was dropped. Who wouldn’t like to travel to the airport by train with no parking cost premiums.

On a National level, coastal rail infrastructure follows winding alignments with steep grades and curves, mapped out by engineers from steam days. Single lines beyond urbanised areas were OK when slow steam traffic was involved, but no more. NSW rail networks have shrunk, restricting long haul alternatives. The present Melbourne-Sydney-Newcastle- Brisbane alignment, is strangled by century old infrastructure and urban restrictions. Then we come to outdated diesel locomotives, with low motive power, but cheap running costs. What ever happened to Rex Connor’s vision of an electrified line from Sydney to Melbourne. It was cheaper in 1978.

There is a major need for fast rail freight over flat track alignments with motive power transporting long container trains at high speed.

Australian Rail Track Corporation proposes an Inland Line from Port Melbourne to Port Brisbane via Albury, Cootamundra, Parkes, Narromine, Dubbo, Werris Creek and Moree to North Star near Goondiwindi; using present rail lines with some new alignments. Freight Trains could carry 50 semi trailer loads of containers at up to 160 klm/hour. (more…)

During a recent Orica Community Consultation meeting, a presentation was given by consultants, updating the ORICA Southlands Development  proposal.

Botany Bay and Catchment Alliance does not support this proposal because:

• It is being assessed under the infamous Part 3A amendment to the Planning Act and it’s successor legal framework.
• The Department of Planning is processing the proposal as a staged development. There is no long term plan showing how the proposed development will not impact on surrounding suburbs, but will transfer traffic and water problems to the detriment of the City of Botany and Randwick Council areas and their residents.
• The site is one required for future water monitoring units as the Botany Aquifer will need future stations in the next 300 years.
• Inadequate future planning for 100 year flooding events will transfer surface water to other suburban areas in an open ended proposal.
• Traffic plans show future traffic flow will generate more traffic onto Foreshore Drive, which is already overburdened by Port Botany container traffic.
• This plan introduces dangerous traffic movements with new traffic lights and turning arrangements along Foreshore Drive and Botany Road. No suburb or traffic system should bear this burden

 Surely, in a 21^st Century City like Sydney, we can:

• Long Term All of Site Plan.
• Organise All of Site 100 year flood plans.
• Not Play one suburb off against another.
• Look constructively at Traffic Flow.
• Consult the community in a meaningful way, listening and responding to valid concerns.

ORICA, the NSW Liberal Government and Planning New South Wales, are in the spotlight to achieve Long Term solutions and not Easy Fixes. BBaCA stands shoulder to shoulder with the Community on this proposal. The real solution is LEAVE SOUTHLANDS UNDEVELOPED.

From the ridgeline at Paddington to Botany Bay runs a great, sand aquifer which in better times could supply 1-2% of Sydney’s pure water needs. The water table is visible in a series of lakes commencing in Centennial Park and running via East Lakes, emptying into Botany Bay at Botany.

When Lieutenant James Cook explored Botany Bay in April 1770, he and Sir Joseph Banks observed aboriginal “huts” on the Bay northern shoreline and heathlands ascending to high ridges beyond. The soil was sandy by nature.

With European settlement in 1788, it was not long before industry arrived in Botany with Simeon Lord establishing his wool factory adjacent to ponds north of Botany Bay in 1815. Other industries followed, mostly toxic to waterways.

Sydney’s insatiable thirst for water soon outstripped the Tank Stream in Sydney Town’s heart. This waterway became polluted and undrinkable. Lachlan Macquarie ordered construction of a tunneled pipeline from Lachlan Swamps, Paddington (Centennial Park), with a standpipe near Hyde Park. This water supply sufficed until population growth once more forced a further solution. Sydney Municipal Council built a pumping station near Engine Pond, at Botany, pumping water to Sydney. This solution sufficed until large dams and reservoirs were built in the 1890s.

Aquifer Science

Botany Aquifer accepts natural rainwater within its catchment, filtering it through sandy soil along its course, bringing good quality water to Botany area. Within the sand is a layer of peat helping the filtering process.

Understanding the Botany Aquifer

www.centennialparklands.com.au/environment/managing_the_parklands_environment/understanding_the_botany_aquifer

Centennial Park

Proclaimed for the 1888 Colony of NSW’s centenary celebrations (more…)

The following is an opinion piece prepared for publication in The Age.  The subject matter is the dredging of Port Phillip Bay but similar could be written about  local processes in regard to the Port Botany Expansion and projects like Desalination. 

BRUMBY BARGES ON

Mr. Brumby has over stepped the mark. The debate about channel deepening is not over Mr. Brumby (Age 23/1) because you have never let it happen. Since first floating to the top around 1999 the channel deepening project has had an armchair ride through open doors, greased and oiled by the Bracks-Brumby machine. Treasury insiders tell us that the Bracks Brumby Batchelor machine was on a mission to ram through channel deepening, regardless of what Treasury had to say. For years words straight from the PoMC’s glossy promotional brochures have appeared like magic on the lips of politicians.

The public has financed $120 million of spin, not science and we are now having it rammed down our throats by the likes of the VFF, who should rather be asking if, as is the case, almost 40% of our export containers are empty, why the hell should they be paying a huge increase in container charges to finance a project which they don’t need? The truth is our primary producers (our biggest exporters) have much more to fear from climate change and drought than they have from shipping channels remaining at their current depth. There are no containers ‘sittin on the dock of the Bay’, and PriceWaterhouse Coopers in its 2007 Economic Analysis of the Port of Melbourne reports that trade through the port will quadruple in 30 years regardless of whether we have channel deepening.  Sadly at the 2007 Inquiry the VFF expressed no concerns at all for their primary producing fishermen colleagues who will suffer a drought in the Bay if channel deepening proceeds.

Whilst there has been plenty of chatter about how much we “need” channel deepening, the silence from government agencies connected with the Bay is deafening.  The EPA, Department of Fisheries, Parks Victoria, Tourism Victoria et al have sat on their hands under the direction of Mr. Brumby. (more…)

IPART will be finalising its recommendations over the coming months.  Responses to the Draft recommendations can be read at www.ipart.nsw.gov.au (click on Other Industries).  IPART is yet to address the issue of empty containers and the need to increase Customs and AQIS examinations.  It recommends that the State Government ask for Auslink funding to fix homegrown rail freight problems at the expense of funding for a national project such as the Inland Rail from Gladstone through Parkes to Melbourne.

IPART, the RTA, Sydney Ports and others recommend the introduction(beyond the trial) of Super B Doubles onto our roads.  The Port is not in a Greenfield site – it is surrounded by some of Australia’s oldest suburbs and it is inappropriate to be introducing these monsters (with BTriples to follow) when individuals are downsizing to bicycles and smaller vehicles.