The newly announced K’gari water modelling project sounds like a positive and welcome action (Gympie Today 2 September). That is until we think about it just a little bit
K’gari currently suffers no development and no extraction that would in any way impact upon its natural water balance. The island’s hydrology is essentially intact and the master of it’s own fate. What then might be the practical purpose of such a program?
Is it just to know and to understand more about this beloved landform? Laudable if so, however word arrangements repeated throughout the program announcement suggest less noble, less passive purposes behind this effort and its accompanying expenditure of public money.
It is alarming that this announcement explicitly relates the proposed study to “decision-making across a range of water policy, planning and management issues, including water resource planning”. Similarly invasive ambitions are repeated throughout the release.
What practical purpose could the proposed information collection serve other than to facilitate effort that imposes impact upon K’gari’s currently intact water balance?
Word forms throughout the announcement suggest this predatory intent.
Very real impacts press upon K’gari’s surface exhibiting a far greater and urgent need for this precious funding.
And there are also many catchments across Qld. immediately under direct extraction pressure and with pressing need for this attention. Better modelling of aquifers afflicted by gas extraction springs to our attention like a hungry bear.
So is this K’gari proposal limited to academic whimsy or does it signal pending development ambitions?
Can someone, somewhere in a public department use written language to explain this clearly and directly? Or have they all entirely forgotten that traditional skill?
Greg Wood, Rainbow Beach
