ENVIRONMENT GROUP URGES PREMIER TO SAVE KEMPSEY'S HERITAGE-LISTED POINT PLOMER

Friday, 24 September 2004 10:00

ENVIRONMENT GROUP URGES PREMIER TO SAVE KEMPSEY'S HERITAGE-LISTED POINT PLOMER
A peak environment group has urged the Premier to save the heritage-listed Point Plomer rustic road at Crescent Head from sealing and sure fire development.

The Total Environment Centre has written to Premier Bob Carr urging him to visit the area to understand the importance of protecting Point Plomer Road, which was recently listed by the National Trust as one of Australia's most endangered places.

TEC's coastal campaigner Fran Kelly said the road's tarring would "guarantee that the urban sprawl and overdevelopment eating up so much of the coast would creep over the area, which leads to Limeburners Nature Reserve and runs through protected wetland and lagoon, reserve and littoral rainforest."

"We have asked the Premier to step in to protect Point Plomer road, as Kempsey Council have determined to tar parts of it by November despite their earlier moratorium over its sealing,"

"The Council once recognised the importance of retaining that rustic road as a means of protecting the heritage and fragile environment through which it meanders. We aren't sure what has changed but the arguments of safety and costs as reasons to tar leave more questions than answers," said Ms Kelly.

"To tar some sections so speeding up the traffic will increase the chance of accidents on both the sealed and unsealed sections. Tarred and straight roads don't automatically equate to safe roads , if they did you would barely ever see an accident on freeways or motorways. As for the costs, the half a million quoted for just a small section would be equivalent to years of maintenance costs on the existing gravel roads," said Ms Kelly.

TEC has backed other local and state environment and heritage groups in calling on the Premier to create a new category of adequately funded road - "Rustic Roads - never to be sealed", and for the Goolawah Reserve through which Point Plomer Road winds to be added to the national park estate.
 

For further information

Contact
:
Fran kelly - Coastal Campaigner
Phone
:
61 2 9299 5599
Email
:
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WWW
:
http://www.tec.org.au/