When we got there we discovered the buy-back was closed from noon.

There are two council workers in the office doing nothing. They told us to come back the next day between 8am and 12 noon.

What a joke. Cars were arriving at the buy back while we there and turning around, drivers shaking their heads.

So these two guys sat there until 4pm turning people away – people who wanted to drop off buy back items and people who wanted to buy them.

Who came up with this? What happened to the guy who has been there for the past couple of years? He was fantastic. He did it all by himself and with a big smile from 7am to 4pm.

I am writing to you today about the need for green waste bins in our community.

In a world that is constantly thinking of the future of our children and what we’ve created for them, why is Shoalhaven City Council one of the few councils that does not provide green waste bins?

These bins are for food scraps and garden waste.

The council should not increase rates without increasing services. A new service would be green waste bins.

Providing green waste bins is overdue and the time is now.

After collecting the green waste the council can reproduce waste into compost, which can be on sold back to the community.

The could give a new revenue stream to the council.

I refer to the  letter in the SCR last Wednesday from G. Kruk of Vincentia on the subject  of the Collingwood Beach Dune Vegetation Management Plan. This is an issue that is not particularly complicated. Shoalhaven City Council has a legal obligation to protect dunes and foreshore and should do so. Its own consultant on environmental matters, ngh environmental, has refused to support the plan to experiment with hedging of trees to no higher than 1.5 metres along sections of the dune because of the risk to dune stability and the likelihood that the area will become “more susceptible to extreme weather conditions that could result in adverse impacts to private and public assets”. The public assets include the sewer line and cycleway and course when the inevitable storm damage eventuates it will be ratepayers right across the Shoalhaven who’ll  foot the bill.                                                                                             

No new plan to stabilise the dunes was necessary. All council needed to do was to protect the healthy, appropriate and effective dune cover that was planted out  in 1978. Destruction of trees is not a problem confined to the Shoalhaven, it exists right across the country and is driven by people with  a misplaced sense of entitlement  who take it upon themselves to  preserve or improve views. At Collingwood these “persons unknown” have taken to the task with, axes, saws and backpacks of roundup.

Unlike most others, Shoalhaven City Council has not developed strict  protocols and countermeasures to minimise such vandalism but rather has chosen to “compromise” with groups seeking to capitalise on the damage. Should these groups prevail it will be a green light for anybody with bushland interrupting a view to clear it, confident they can do so with impunity.

I was interviewed by a very polite ranger last week in relation to the Greens’ alleged “illegal planting of trees” on  the Collingwood Beach dunes. I asked him what efforts council had made to investigate tree vandalism and if any charges had been laid.He chose to make no comment. It’s a strange world when tree planters are investigated but tree destroyers escape attention.