No action on Peninsula heat island health crisis
There is nothing currently addressing the increasing health threat of the heat island effect on the Peninsula.
Development applications are being approved and will continue to be approved that will increase the heat island effect.
These developments will have an asset life of about 50 years and are similarly designed to those already adding to the heat increase on the Peninsula.
What are the expectations for the future?
Central Coast Council has no immediate plan to review planning on the Peninsula (Peninsula News, September 18, p5).
Actions to address this human health crisis could be 10 years into the future.
Then there is the re-education stage to transform design and acceptance of green space as a feature and not an impost on profit, and against profit.
When the famous oyster depuration plant was constructed at Koolewong, defying approval, it was not demolished and survives to this day.
What is the future for these heat island effect developments over their "asset life" and what will be the consequences?
Demolition is probably not an option.
My belief is the matter will he addressed in due course, as reported in the Peninsula News.
It will he interesting to observe how this and other matters affecting human health increase in priority or remain as an inconvenience.
The approval of development applications has a self-interest history, accompanied by a significant political and Iegal informal code of conduct that is all-powerful.
Editions of the Peninsula News contain reports of this practice, without naming them in these terms.
This is not news.
What I have described above has been an everyday experience since May 2016.
Our Local Government re-education continues.
If development applications complied with the original character statements, the heat island effect would not be as severe.
The fault is not the public's.
The Covid pandemic was a short-term medical challenge.
Ask me after this summer for a comment on the future of this health crisis.
SOURCE:
Letter, 24 Sep 2023
Norm Harris, Umina