The Rebuild Carss Park Pool Action Group (the Action Group) enthusiastically supports rebuilding the Carss Park pool but misrepresents the facts.
The Action Group does not represent 160,000 residents; it promotes the interests of a few.
Council is however obliged to have regard to the broader public interest.
The geotechnical report for Carss Park identified significant shortcomings including heavy metal contamination, lack of bedrock, and reclaimed land. These limitations will negatively impact the final cost.
Carss Park cannot provide adequate bus or car access. Residents will be devastated to learn their streets will be asked to carry between 850,000 and 1 million visits a year for the facility to be viable.
Rebuilding at Carss Park will see a loss of green space from having a larger footprint, which can be partially redeemed if the pool was built at Todd Park and the existing Carss Park pool land used for new sports fields.
The pool did produce champions (30 years ago!), but residents need a new facility producing a new generation of champions. Carss Park is not satisfactory.
Jubilee Oval is not appropriate either as other letter writers have noted. The Oval hosts major sporting events, there is a school close by and traffic already horrendous.
Todd Park is not 100 per cent ideal, but it is workable because the park is adjacent to the Princes Highway and King Georges Road and there is access via a signalised intersection onto the multilane Princes Highway.
For this and many other reasons, Todd Park must be the preferred option.
Peter Hill, Oatley
Todd Park is dangerous
What bothers me deeply about the proposal to include Todd Park as a potential site for now-defunct Kogarah War Memorial Olympic swimming pool is the dangerous location of the site.
Todd Park sits on the high-speed intersection of the Pacific Highway and King Georges Road, posing serious accessibility, traffic volume and visibility issues. Why any planning authority would consider it a suitable site for a public swimming pool escapes me. It would pose serious traffic hazards for motorists, pedestrians and patrons, especially children. It would be the equivalent of a school zone on a motorway.
Has Georges River Council taken leave of its limited senses?
Richard Piech, Sans Souci
Some incredible observations
I was astounded to read the letter in St George and Sutherland Shire Leader Wed. June 3, in which Gary Schoer referred to the Longwall mining proposal UNDER a water catchment pondage.
Incredibly, such actions could even be considered by anyone versed in Geology which you assume someone in a mining company would be.
Is mining coal near Sydney essential? Do we need it? Or is it just, as usual, the need for profit at the expense of the community?
There is only one circumstance I would consider such a proposal reasonable and that would be if the CEO all executives, managers and Directors of the company involved were to build their offices and occupy them during mine working hours at the coalface. Yes, I really mean underground at the true coalface and be required to use whatever drips from the ceiling to drink.
We might be able to include politicians in the morning/afternoon activity hour and insert a few references to the science of global warming as stealth marketing and subliminal messages because nothing else seems to work.
What else is incredible is that the Leader carries on regardless, good on you, please keep up the excellent work informing our communities.
John Dodson, Hurstville
An accident waiting to happen
The April 8 submission to Bayside Council of the amended plans for the abandoned Bexley Bowling Club site by the Australasian Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA) seriously downplays the dangers of increased traffic along Edward Street, Bexley North.
Extra car movements of 45 per hour during a 2-hour peak via the Edward/Oliver Street roundabout will increase arrival traffic on the street by 95 cars each night, followed by the same volume of departure traffic in the late evening.
The planned driveway on Edward Street is less than 20 meters from the roundabout and poses a serious threat to driver and pedestrian safety.
AHEPA's proposal highlights that facilities will support events of up to 445 patrons held 15% of the time - and with the business open 7-days a week this represents 55 days of the year.
The new designs provide off-street parking for 95 cars (supporting 220 patrons). Meanwhile, the submission admits that during 55 days of the year (likely to be every Friday and Saturday) when 445 visitors are expected, on-street parking will be needed. There is no mention of how the additional 83 cars will be accommodated.
This level of traffic, combined with proposed closing times of 11 pm Sunday to Thursday, and 1 am Friday and Saturday, meaning that the quiet streets around the site will forever be changed to that of a noisy entertainment precinct. Bayside Council has allowed the 're-zoning' by stealth of a residential environment into a commercial entertainment district. Stuart Hill, Kingsgrove
Open spaces are precious
You would think that in light of the ongoing global situation that local governments would start to realise how precious our open spaces are.
People flocked to the parks under the lockdown conditions; so many in fact that a lot of parks and playgrounds had to be closed and/or restricted. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence would conclude that not only are our green spaces highly valued by our communities, but also that there's a chronic shortage of them!
But instead, our council is hell-bent on taking one of our most significant parks away from us and building a concrete and fibreglass monstrosity that none of us asked for and none of us want. Of course this mega aquatic centre is designed to be used by residents from all over the greater Georges River area, as Cr Greene himself has said. That's great for those in the farther reaches of the region; after their kids have done with swimming they can simply drive back home if they want to enjoy open green spaces. Meanwhile, where do we go?
Damn the Strategic Plan, and damn the local community who will lose a precious resource. Mark McDougall, Blakehurst