The article ‘Higher fees, fewer grounds’ was disappointing in that it did not provide your readers with key elements of council’s response to the questions raised.

Over the past five years council has undertaken over $2.1 million of work on sporting fields across the shire utilised by cricket including upgrades to fields, new pitches, cricket nets and amenities. These improvements include converting the Surfside field to a standard suitable for competition level games.

Further capital improvement works are planned across the shire in the coming 2010/11 Budget, which of course also benefits other field users.

Council has set new fees for sporting fields to strike a balance between the cost borne by ratepayers and that borne by users through a reasonable user fee.

Council does undertake field renewal works in the growing season, which can incur some inconvenience (eg immediately following topdressing).

The level of utilisation of fields has meant that this work can be accommodated within the cricket draw using other available fields available within the shire.

Warren Sharpe, Eurobodalla Shire Council Roads and recreation director

Botanic Gardens ‘too valuable to lose’

Re your article ‘Botanic Gardens too valuable to lose’ (9/6/10) , I agree.

This type of facility should be encouraged due the many positive educational, informative and pleasurable features that have resulted from the thousands of hours of volunteers’ efforts over many years, with relatively little cost to ratepayers.

The Gardens attract many residents, tourists and other visitors of all ages. These can and do benefit considerably from the high standard of examples of many local (ie native) plants and biodiversity.

This is all the more impressive compared to the many other areas of the shire that are certainly not free from weeds. The Gardens also provide additional variety to the excellent local beaches.

Brian Versey, Long Beach

Upgrade the Araluen Road

I support Don Burns (Bay Post/Moruya Examiner 16/06) in his call for State and Federal funds to significantly upgrade the road from Moruya to Araluen. With the support of Palerang Council, then upgrade the road into Braidwood. With a safe, all-weather surface, widening and some passing lanes, this would provide an alternative route to the coast from Canberra and Goulburn, easing traffic on the Kings Highway on the Clyde Mountain, particularly in holiday periods.

Penny Gerner, Catalina

Coastal wattle has important role

With no consultation with members of the Community Association or the wider Long Beach community, Mr Lambert (‘What a wattle cop out,’ Bay Post/Moruya Examiner 11/6/10) has again taken it upon himself to speak on behalf of the community re the Coastal Wattle Study at Long Beach.

Oddly though, despite 750 flyers delivered around the Long Beach area, only 11 members of the public (six being active or past members of Long Beach Landcare) turned up at the council- organised presentation of the Landcare initiated study.

Clearly the Long Beach community had little or no interest in a very localised issue, which was beaten up out of all proportion by a few noisy residents.

Mr Lambert is presumptuous in claiming he speaks for the Long Beach community. He does not.

Coastal wattle is a native species whose “job” it is to stabilise sand dunes, and that is precisely what it is doing at Long Beach and elsewhere along the coastline from Queensland to the southern mainland states.

Not “wrong plant, wrong place” as stated in the Bay Post, but right plant, right place. Removal from dunes opens them up to instability and erosion, the latter most undesirable in severe storms, which seemingly tend to occur mid-year in our area.

Management (an easy option) to control any spread of the wattle from its dunal location at Long Beach, or elsewhere for that matter, is the preferred solution to any perceived problem; eradication is an extremely foolish proposition and flies in the face of ecological practice.

With predictions of sea level rise, it would appear to be unwise to destabilise what might well assist near-coast dwellers to protect their properties some time in the future should this indeed eventuate.

Alison Baird, Co-ordinator Long Beach Landcare

‘Sickening situation’ at Surf Beach

We received the notice of Bunnings development proposal on May 26 with a closing date of June 17. Family commitments and sickness prevented me from studying it for several days.

In the time available, to my horror, I learned that the Bunnings proposal will remove tens of thousands of trees and huge amounts of earth/rock from alongside the tourist drive road next to the Surf Beach roundabout, creating a vast flat open space equivalent to seven football fields with a monster shed over 200 metres long.

It will mean the loss of a huge area of habitat and connecting corridors for an important range of native fauna. Bird life will be equally devastated.

Such crude destruction of the natural and visual beauty of our coastal strip is appalling.

Council is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Our council doesn’t realise the value of our coastal strip to the shire and the State. They are prepared to vandalise its beauty and destroy its natural character to give commercial advantage to a huge public company.

Occasionally I shop at Bunnings but this location, so close to our beaches and disfiguring our tourist drive, is the most unsuitable of places.

I read that council is already calling for tenders to remove the trees and rock, when the application has not yet been dealt with. I understand that a former recent employee of council prepared the Bunnings application, and that council denied us an extension of time to consider the hundreds of pages of Bunnings application.

All in all, it is a sickening situation for which council should be condemned by the entire community.

Why aren’t Coastwatchers and the Greens expressing opposition to this vandalism?

Rosemary Hughes, Surf Beach