In reply to Rose Wanchap, the ‘champion’ of the proposed controversial West Byron housing development, it’s time to take a look at what this really means for our community.
Once an area such as our Byron Bay is destroyed there is no going back. It is common sense to see that it not possible to continue to abuse the landscape as you wish to do so and expect it remain the same.
We all have to live somewhere, but West Byron isn’t it. This is not the way development in the area should be going.
The West Byron development is a monstrous short sighted undertaking designed to line the pockets of developers and real estate agents using trite, false arguments commonly trotted out to justify such projects at the expense of the majority of the present Byron Bay community and our local environment.
Such arguments were used to develop places like the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise, places where the developer has been unbridled, and now their residents flock to our town in droves to re-live their lost dreams of 30 years ago!
The ‘need for more cheap housing near the town’ argument is based upon encouraging people to continue living their city lifestyle ‘slip around the corner to the supermarket’ type of existence.
The convenience of industrial food outlets are not what we should be aspiring to Rose! I think what you want is not the same as what most of us want!
Most thinking people of the western world are becoming increasingly aware that the centralisation of people in mega cities, being dependent on large corporations for work and the supply of food (shipped from all corners of the earth) is not working for them or their children.
The numbers wanting to escape this lifestyle is plainly evident.
Rather than building another housing estate on the edge of town the creation of smaller decentralised, self sufficient communities (there’s plenty of room out there) the size of say a Federal or at most a Bangalow that are connected by a suitable infrastructure of public rail and road transport is the way to go.
Furthermore, these communities should be facilitated by our local farmers who should be ‘king’ not pawns in an industrial distribution network.
Much far-sighted, well reasoned and thought-out sensible planning is required if we are to avoid creating in our, fast disappearing, ‘haven of sanity’ the world we have just escaped from.
You and your short-sighted (and agenda-driven) cohorts on council [aka Crs Sol Ibrahim, Chris Cubis, Alan Hunter and Di Woods] are doing this community a gross disservice.
Michael Hart, Mullumbimby
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
