Beside the seaside, beside the sea

Oh, the irony.

After years of criticism from JCU's Professor Jon Nott about this Council's push for extensive high-density housing along our coastline, Mayor Byrne, in a surprising plea for help, is seeking financial support from the Federal government to manage the problem that would be posed from a tidal surge or a cyclone.

Mayor Byrne says in the Cairns Post that our stretch of coastline is more exposed to rising sea levels than anywhere in Australia.

Did we read that correct?

However this is not news to renowned climate expert at JCU, Professor Jon Nott. "A super-cyclone ...comes through every 200 years," he says. "We know how often they come through and that’s why we’re confident in being able to say that we definitely know another one will occur in the future."

Nott has repeated this claim on many occasions over recent years. He also says that developers and profits are ruling supreme at the expense of safety. "I know they're tough words, but I'm sick and tired about beating round the bush," Nott says. He condemns the places of development that are ill-thought out planning and approvals by Council in known cyclone and flood storm surge areas.

Mayor Byrne got rather flustered a while ago in a remarkable public debate with Professor Nott. He called scientists 'Neanderthals’ and saying that 'we've never ever had a natural disaster ever hit in the history Cairns'. In the debate of global warming that focused whether housing development was right on the coast, making residents vulnerable to increased and more extreme cyclones.

Professor Nott accused the Cairns Council of putting people and property at risk. Mayor Byrne regarded Professor Nott as a doomsayer and a Neanderthal. Now, Byrne is saying that there is a threat of a tidal sea threat to our coastline. My, how some people change their tune.

Last February, in a letter to the Cairns Post, he calls for a reasoned debate on climate change and global warming and then stated "that as Australia represents only one third of 1 per cent of the world's population, it is reasonable to assume that our contribution to the problem will be of similar proportion." We know that per capita, Australia is one of the worst greenhouse gas polluters in the industrialised world. Australia needed to show leadership in reducing green house gas emissions and that leadership needs to be at the personal and local government level as well as at the Federal level.

Byrne has been in denial about the impact of human activity on global warming and climate change. Cairns Council continues to approve buildings that are not designed for the tropics and depend on electricity rather than embrace the natural airflow elements?

This is odd. Mayor Byrne lives in a $430,000 traditional Queenslander in Whitfield with overhanging roofs and verandas on a large corner section, designed to capture the breeze. Why then, when he's in his Spence Street air-conditioned 3rd floor office, would he not want to ensure the over-whelming majority of unit and house development approvals, embrace a similar code of design?

It's beyond me and probably most rationale people to understand the answer to that. Cairns could and should be leading the country on such designs in this climate conscious time we live.

Traditional North Queenslander house elements like large over-hanging external window covers should be mandatory. But they're not. Take a look an any new unit complex. All you'll see is rows of Air Cons loaded up the walls.

Few native tree plantings have occurred in the "Garden in a city" programme that the Mayor is so proud of. Medium strips along main roads is where these have largely occurred. "Garden in a Traffic Island" the project should be more aptly the renamed.

Such native planting would offset the electricity and energy used by Council staff, travel and vehicles?

It's time that this Council looks at the real differences we can make in our own backyard. How we can share ideas about how we can all contribute to reducing global warming rather than denigrate people like Professor Nott who has been working for years to bring such concerns to the attention of politicians and decision-makers.

The Mayor now says that, in conjunction with his China-loving Advance Cairns qango - the first organisation that should be dismantled and funding withdrawn under the new Council - he's working on a submission to the Federal government for "assistance in flood prevention and mitigation". Big words. But rather empty in meaning when local development is working in contrast to such submissions.

Byrne goes on to say that he's been "at the Federal Government for four years to help with flood works".

Yet Kerry Eaton, an independent Cairns engineering surveyor, who submitted an extensive report to Council following last month's Gordonvale flooding, says the problem is in the planning department. He stated the real cause of the flooding could be blamed on the new neighbouring developments.

Cairns Council have put it down to "unusual weather that is a once-in-a-20-year occurrence." However, it is all about poor planning of the new subdivisions and lack of infrastructure.

A CEC plumbing contractor who spoke to off the record to CairnsBlog, said there was a serious drainage problem on the Southside. His observation followed months of laying sewage pipes in the newly developed land.

"We would dig down only a meter in some places and there was water there, heaps of it. The water table is often just below the surface," he said. "We were often laying pipes in water, so it was obvious that something extra needed to be done in this area, you know, substantial culverts. You could see that only a small rainfall was going to have an impact here."

Which such a massive addition of hard surface been added to a natural adsorbent landscape, especially in high rainfall area like South Cairns and Gordonvale, it's imperative large channels are built in to housing developements.

The mitigation measures now being undertaken in and around Chinaman and Clarke's creek are reactive.

It appears that Eaton's report was very controversial as it questioned the very developments that Cairns City Council had approved and permitted, along with stormwater systems the were seriously inadequate.

They also didn't take into account neighbouring established housing.

There’s a lot of questions about how such planning is undertaken and approved in our region. The State government should be taking a long hard look.

This is further important in light of huge sediment run off at False Cape that now appears to be contributed from Council allowing wet season works and excavating.

There's a pattern of neglect to strategic planning and an urgency to build without following due process and best practice. Some do not simply understand, nor embrace the effects of the tropical weather patterns, flood delta and kinetic flows in North Queensland.

In view of Mackay's experience this last week, Cairns has a great deal to be extremely concerned about.

Something to think about on a rainy day.