PORT PHILLIP CONSERVATION COUNCIL INC.
	Tel +61395891802, +61429176725	47 Bayview Crescent , BLACK ROCK VIC 3193
	Fax +61395895194	ggd@netspace.net.au
	A0020093K Victoria	www.vicnet.net.au/~phillip
	ABN 46 291 176 191	17th  October 2005
President's Report to 2005 Annual General Meeting
Channel Deepening: The Supplementary Environment Effects Statement required before the full channel deepening proposal can be approved has now been tabled. The PPCC Inc. Secretary, Jenny Warfe, is a very active member of the Blue Wedges Coalition, and she supplies regular reports of its work to our Committee of Management, which is satisfied that this issue is being capably handled. It is also worth noting that the Channel Deepening (Facilitation) Bill 2004, which received its first reading on 4th December 2004, has been left to languish on the parliamentary Notice Paper. Debate, with Mr Honeywood to speak, has been listed for nearly a year, with no action, just a threat. Marina Proposals: Opportunistic proposals persist at Queenscliff, Werribee South, Frankston, and Mornington: Queenscliffe Planning Scheme was amended in August 2005 to enable Parks Victoria's plan for a $20 million "Queenscliff Harbour Redevelopment" with slipways, fuelling berths, and 80 ML of sand dredging per year. PPCC Inc. has made an EES submission on the very large marina proposed at Werribee South calling for total rejection of the enormous scale of such an imposition on the Bay, the coastal land nearby and the skyline. Frankston Council’s awful 1997 marina proposal with massive Bay filling, and structures near Oliver's Hill cliff, will be a threat until the Victorian Coastal Strategy ceases to list Frankston as a “Safe Boat Harbour ” site. An EES is being prepared for a proposal for a concrete wave screen and pens in Mornington Harbour. Unilateral Marina Works at Leopold: Aerial photographs that PPCC Inc. had taken in recent years have been most helpful in tracing the growth of a bizarre attempt by a developer to dig a 2 hectare boat harbour and connect it to Corio Bay by digging a channel across the Crown seabed and protecting that channel by dumping rock groynes on either side of it, all of which was done without any Planning Permit, or consent under the Coastal Management Act 1995. VCAT is hearing a continuing case by Greater Geelong City Council against the owners of the freehold land damaged. The remarks made about the defendant’s arguments by VCAT’s President, Justice Stuart Morris, make interesting reading. Rosebud Skateboard Ramp: As the 2004 AGM authorized, PPCC Inc. got legal advice on Mornington Peninsula Shire’s collaboration with the State Government to circumvent the principle VCAT declared in 2003 that the Victorian Coastal Strategy precludes skateboard ramps on foreshore reserves. PPCC Inc. has written to Parks Victoria objecting to its plan to build a “skateboard park” on the Rosebud foreshore, and it wants a review by VCAT. Mt Eliza Coastal Reserve Plan:  PPCC Inc. has endorsed Mt Eliza Association for Environmental Care Inc’s proposal for a Coastal Reserve, but our call for public acquisition of the Ansett estate does not seem to have been accepted yet. Sand Replenishment Welcomed: PPCC Inc. is most impressed by the Minister for Environment’s announcement that beach renourishment, as urged by a Black Rock and Sandringham Conservation Association Inc. campaign, and PPCC Inc, will be used instead of just a bleak boulder wall along the rapidly eroding cliff near Royal Avenue, Sandringham. Bicycle Road Links: As stated in our July Newsletter, the overwater section at Brighton has entailed dumpingseveral large boulder groynes on the sandy seabed there. An announcement of the plan for the missing link in the Bayside Bicycle Road, which ought to be built on the narrower than usual road reserve at Beaumaris by halving the number of car lanes, is expected soon. PPCC Inc. has written to Kingston City Council objecting to its proposal to bisect its foreshore reserve for a bicycle road, and also the separate issue of its pernicious policy on low plants for sea views. Coastal Management Act Consents: Beaumaris Conservation Society Inc. and PPCC Inc. noted the Environment Minister’s wise refusal of consent to Bayside City Council’s proposed incursion into the Landside Crown land reserve opposite the Ricketts Point “Tea House”, which both groups opposed. Far less satisfactory was the consent on an emergency pretext, and forgetting Planning Scheme overlay “protections”, for an excavator to remove much sandstone from the Beaumaris Cliff, which has survived untroubled apart from natural weathering since the Holocene epoch some 10,000 years ago.
Geoffrey Goode, President