Is this Necessary?
Monday, 16 January 2012 14:04
The State Government, having taken over a site in the rural area along Vyner Street at Pinjarra Hills, has proceeded to wipe out all trees and vegetation on the site.
There is no doubt that if a private developer treated a bushland site in an environmentally sensitive area in this way that there would be consequences.
The State Government has already failed to listen to local concerns that this is the wrong place for an ambulance station.
The local community clearly understands that the population centre of Moggill/Bellbowrie would have been the appropriate place to build this emergency services facility.
Currently, the Moggill/Bellbowrie area, with around 12 000 people, has no police station, fire station or ambulance station. This is despite the fact that it was cut off during the Brisbane floods and would likely be cut off in other forms of natural disaster including bushfire.
Isolating an ambulance station in a rural area away from population centres in an area where emergency services facilities are few if any and where communities can be so easily isolated shows that the decision makers in this Department are far removed from the common-sense that would prevail if the community were consulted.
In the meantime, they have further thumbed their noses at local concerns to avoid unnecessary damage to the environment by “nuking” the site in preparation for the builders.
I have written and expressed the concerns of myself and local Councillor Margaret de Wit to the Minister in relation to the treatment of this site. Click here to read my letter to the Minister.