Keeping land in a natural condition, managing it well is not 'sterilisation'. 

Do we need to create rural residential slums for the future?

Is there not more than ample vacant land available in the Eden region, as witness the for sale signs everywhere?

In fact, it seems to me that few blocks in the original subdivision have been built upon even after all this time.

But also it seems that environmental and historical values around Boydtown are being flouted.

The few remaining trees beside the historical lagoon where Boyd and Brierly camped all those years ago have been cleared, destroying its values and allowing more sunlight onto the waters and creating a hazard akin to septic tank overflow.

J Jenkins

Eden

With reference to the front page of the Magnet, Thursday July 21.

After reading this article ‘Valley’s land shortage’, we at Potoroo Palace Native Animal Sanctuary feel very sad that the leaving of a flourishing natural community of Australian native plants and animals, has been referred to as “sterilising”.

It seems bizarre that our perceptions of things have become so distorted that houses and pavements are now considered a natural and unsterile alternative.

Our region is known as the “Wilderness Coast”, so let us keep our wilderness and use already degraded land for the expansion of suburbia.

Staff of Potoroo Palace

Last week we were reminded of the plight of hundreds of residents and ratepayers who have the misfortune to live on one of the many Crown roads across the shire that are not currently maintained by anyone.

Responding to the plight of the Weller family of Hood Street, Candelo, whose seriously ill son struggled to access medical attention due to the fact emergency services could not negotiate their inaccessible Crown road, Bega Valley Shire Council helpfully announced that “it wasn’t council’s problem”.

Responding to the same issue, council’s general manager Leanne Barnes offered her sympathies to the Weller family, before suggesting that the community should continue to work with the state government to resolve the issue of Crown roads.

The Bega Valley Shire Residents and Ratepayers Association is appalled by the response displayed by BVSC and equally appalled by the fact that the NSW government, whose Minister for Transport and Infrastructure just happens to be the Member for Bega, Andrew Constance, provides absolutely no funding for the maintenance of Crown roads.

The BVSRRA believes that if the best the general manager can do is to wish the Weller family and all those in a similar position “good luck”, then we should buy a $50 answering machine to play that message.

The community is heartily fed-up with the apparent inability or unwillingness of different levels of government to work cooperatively to ensure that basic infrastructure such as roads are adequately maintained.

If Mr Constance can find the money to fund port facilities to support the cruise ship industry in Eden or to tip into the “sinkhole” that is Merimbula airport, why can’t he find funds and work with council to develop a strategy to upgrade these deteriorating Crown roads?

Maybe if council stopped frittering money away on monuments to government or questionable real estate deals and the state government stopped investing in projects that will deliver benefits to only a small portion of the community, they just might have the funds to take care of basic infrastructure.

John Richardson, Bega Valley Shire Residents and Ratepayers Association