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August 17, 2009
As noted earlier the 30-year draft Plan for Greater Adelaide was recently released for public consultation. The draft says that it returns to some of the principles of Colonel Light’s plan, such as the concept of a balance between nature and the city, by expanding the network of parks and greenways to encourage walking and cycling and to provide more shade to urban areas.
It sounds good--too good. Now I have been photographing along the Port River estuary on the LeFevre Peninula, which has been subject to pollution from heavy industry, and is a local example of the immense damage Australia has done to its own environment through its own actions. So I turned to Northern LeFevre Peninsula Masterplan to see how it exemplified the Greater Adelaide Plan's proposal for the network of parks and greenways.
The Peninsula Masterplan says that after extensive community consultation:
an additional 62 hectares of land on the Lefevre Peninsula has been rezoned for defence, infrastructure and port-related industry to meet demand generated by the State’s success in attracting the billion dollar Air Warfare Destroyer contract and major infrastructure developments in the region.
Well, that puts the development priority upfront.
The reality is that the Lefevre Peninsula is one of the state’s three key areas for future industrial land development due to its significant export function, the extent of its infrastructure and the amount of industrial land available. The ecological values of open spaces, wetlands and saltmarshes are little more than an afterthought. The open spaces are just minimal ideas.
The masterplan goes to say that the Northern Lefevre Peninsula Development Plan Amendment creates:
a framework for the integration of new industry with the natural landscape, including an open space corridor from the coast at North Haven to Mutton Cove on the Port River. It recognises the need for buffer zones and open space to maintain the integrity of the environment, protects areas of significant biodiversity and provides stormwater management policies.
However the Development Plan Amendment frames the area as one of having "a significant opportunity to contribute to a well planned and integrated industrial cluster to support defence and port related activities that will further contribute to employment and economic growth for South Australia, and to the provision of infrastructure and enhancement of open spaces on the Peninsula for the benefit of the community and the environment."
The majority of vacant land on the northern Lefevre Peninsula is held in State Government ownership and vested with Defence SA. Defence SA is responsible for delivering South Australia’s Defence Industry Strategy, including the State Government’s commitments to the Royal Australian Navy’s $8 billion Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) project; and ensuring the sustainable development of a defence and port-related industrial precinct on the northern Lefevre Peninsula. This is the face of SA as a defence state.
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I was down at Mutton Cove on Sunday. What a sad degraded place --there is little effort in rehabilitating it or linking it to Biodiversity Park, which I could not find. All the action is on industrial development.
The feeling is one of industry not wanting people there, and hoping that the lack of rehabilitation will mean that the public space can be privatised.