POTATO Point residents have hit back after an article appeared in the Sun Herald saying residents wanted a large firebreak around the settlement.
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According to the Potato Point Group, this claim bears little relation to the truth and the article contributed nothing to the resolution of what has been a difficult issue and a difficult year for Potato Point.
Group president Bill Barker said the article "Potato Point’s Bushfire Battle” reprinted in the Narooma News on December 3 suggested that the village’s 150 residents are so concerned about the bushfire risk that they want to destroy a large area of national park to create a grassy fire break.
Barker said there has indeed been a lot of dispute about what, if anything, needed to be done about the fire risk facing Potato Point, with some people wanting various amounts of clearing while others were wanting less or none.
“Our impression is that few support the extreme position of councillor Pollock,” Barker said.
“People came here for the bushland setting and want to keep it that way. “True, there is only one road out, but the village is better placed than hundreds of other bushfire prone areas in the state, in that it has an ocean frontage.”
Barker said that, contrary to the impression created by the article, there had been a major public consultation process earlier in the year, which involved intensive field studies and an independent bush fire assessment by one of Australia’s leading fire behaviour experts, Dr Kevin Tolhurst of Melbourne University.
Everyone had an opportunity to have their say, both at public meetings and in writing.
“Two-thirds of the public submissions to the consultation were opposed to any clearing at all, which shows at the very least that there is a wide diversity of opinion among the people affected,” he said.
Barker said that the State Environment Minister took a decision in August on the basis of three options set out as part of the public consultation. His decision involved a considerable amount of clearing, though not as much as in the extreme option demanded by councillor Pollock and a few others.
“Those of us who opposed any clearing were disappointed by the decision and saddened to see the extent of destruction of national park forest that has resulted,” Barker said.
“But whatever positions we may have taken in the past, we believe it would be better now for the village to regard the Minister’s decision as a compromise that we can live with.
“After such an exhaustive process and over a year of acrimonious debate it is time to put the controversy behind us and to engage once again as friends and neighbours.
“We can then turn to supporting our local fire brigade and ensuring our personal fire protection plans are in place.”
Barker added that no-one in the village should be complacent about fire, but it is sensible to keep things in proportion and to allow the competent fire authorities to make decisions about the allocation of resources without being subjected to special pleading based on misleading statements.
Barker said there were numerous shortcomings and inaccuracies in the article:
* There was no comment from the Rural Fire Service or the Potato Point Fire Brigade, which are obviously the organisations most relevant to this issue;
* Fire authorities do not rate Potato Point’s fire risk at the same high level as many other areas. The Eurobodalla Fire Risk Management Plan places Potato Point at number 62 among places or assets at risk in the Shire;
* The area in question came under the control of the National Parks and Wildlife Service in 2001, not 1995;
* Google Earth’s historical images showed that the area was already treed when National Parks took over, not a 600 metre grassy firebreak;
* The article failed to mention that the area in question is an Endangered Ecological Community and that it supports a number of threatened species, not just one.