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The obtaining of a bus service was
not easy and such other things that are taken for granted
including street lighting, road repairs, park mowing, the post
box, tree planting and lots more have not been automatic as many
residents assume.
In 1993, most of
the committee work involved the day to day matters which every
year brings.
We are still
involved in on-going issues such as low flying aircraft, river
noise, and gravel mining.
There is no short term solution for
problems that involve large commercial enterprises as well as
government bodies but support from other interest groups is
developing and the issues are important enough to for our
continued attention.
Gravel mining is an
environmental issue with two major results. One is a filthy ugly
river and the other is erosion of the river banks.
We have been
complaining for years about local erosion only to be told that it
is not caused by dredging.
When mining
operations moved to the Milton stretch of the river and the damage
to the river bank cost the council hundreds of thousands of
dollars, we obtained a powerful ally, the Brisbane City Council.
Aircraft noise is a problem we
frequently correct on a short term basis.
There is a big map
at Archerfield airport which is full of coloured pins representing
complaints received. Areas with lots of complaints are pacified by
a slight change of flight paths. This naturally, results in
another pile of complaints and pins going onto other sections of
the map.
Complaints cease in
the original area, the pins come out and the process starts all
over again.
We try to keep the pins on our
sections of the map.
The real problem,
however is more safety than noise. Archerfield is unmanned at
night and the aircraft, consisting of commercial, private, and
teaching, fly without official control. This is dangerous, as
other accidents down south over the past few years have shown, and
totally unacceptable. We live under the flight path for take offs
and landings.
The entire exercise
is tied up in so much bureaucratic red tape that it's almost
impossible to find anybody in the multitude of management
committees and government authorities who does not have somebody
to whom they can pass the buck.
Instead of the
noise issue, we have to start on a new tack and go public on the
safety issue.
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