The Peninsula Link is soon to open. This is the freeway
opposed by environment groups as it cut through several reserves, including the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve, heritage original native bushland. The aerial map images below show the extent of the destruction:
2009:
2012:
The remaining creatures living there will be subjected to the noise and pollution from thousands of motor vehicles passing through every day.
Those who participated in this vandalism – construction workers and others – should be thoroughly ashamed. How would they like their houses to be bulldozed while they were living in them? So much of Victoria’s vegetation has been cleared since European settlement and it is still ongoing despite supposedly greater environmental awareness now. The situation is much the same in other states.
Roads are one infrastructure item governments always seem to find funding for – despite making cuts to vital services such as health care – and there are more planned around Melbourne to scar the landscape. Population growth is one driving force (so to speak) behind road construction and there is no sign of either stopping, unfortunately.
A relevant letter from today’s Herald-Sun:
Precious peninsula
THE Government claims the new Peninsula Link freeway will cut the time of traveling between Mt Martha and Carrum Downs by 17 minutes, and save 40 minutes in peak time.
The aim is more than an expensive $759 million effort to reduce driving times for commuters.
The peninsula’s green wedges will be more accessible and be nibbled away for urban sprawl. More land will be opened for housing to soak up our population growth, set at full-throttle speed by government policies.
More of our environmental and social capital will be traded in so developers and investors can profit from Melbourne’s growth.
Housing on the peninsula won’t be affordable, but maximised by good location and the globalisation of the property market.
– Beatrice Ortega, Heidelberg Heights
More angering news is that the Victorian Planning Minister now has new powers to speed major projects. Which means he can override environmental concerns and residents’ protests against inappropriate developments in favor of business and developers. I feel so helpless to oppose these greedy growth-obsessed parasites and politicians, and it is incredibly frustrating to see the continuing destruction of the once-livable city and state I have grown up in.
Addendum: A letter, The Age, 29/1:
Destroying nature just to fulfil wants
AS PENINSULA Link opens to huge amounts of traffic and raves about the racing car-perfect surface, we should take a minute to think about what we have lost in order to save some time: hundreds of trees that were homes to wildlife, hundreds of hectares of precious habitat for endangered southern brown bandicoots, and the songs of birds. We’re going to lose more as development speeds up throughout the Mornington Peninsula and, in particular, the Tootgarook Swamp, which stands in the way of the Peninsula Link extension to Rye.
The cost, so often advertised as $756 million, will be more than $2 billion by the time we pay it off over 25 years. As we hear more and more of our human services being cut, education being slashed, and hospital beds being closed, I despair at our selfish desire for comfort over substance; and at our ability to leave a sustainable planet for the future.
– Gillian Collins, Friends of the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve, Frankston North
News article, 31/1: “Peninsula Link blamed for more animal fatalities on Casey roads”, Cranbourne Leader.
