Wetlands, Drylands
Foreshore development on Sydney harbour has been controlled for many years, although that hasn’t really stopped a lot of buildings going up, mostly of the hugely expensive kind, but including some public projects. The city’s commitment to extending greenways on the foreshore has seen some positive change along Blackwattle Bay and Glebe, and we might once have hoped for even more. Except the State government doesn’t want things that way: they prefer development.

It’s not so long ago that the harbour was so thoroughly polluted that we aren’t yet still feeling the effects. Commercial fishing was recently halted, due to PCB’s, for example. The idea that huge developments may go up, adding to the problem of sewerage, let alone that new and existing home owners and commercial operators could extend access and boat use, ought to concern the entire city, but probably doesn’t, much, at least not yet. As so often, it will become more of a concern only after the problem has occurred.

We need better environmental managers in government. Look, the UN just put out a huge report about global warming and there are predictions that Sydney’s going to cop it bad. We should be working on every element of the city to see to it that we’re better off, all of us, not just the property developers and the cabin cruiser set. There’s an election in March, and normally I’d be glad of the current Premier’s commanding lead in the polls, but right now, my vote is tending elsewhere.