Why all roads lead to South Gippsland

I have read with interest the articles in your paper regarding the closing down of the VLE Saleyards in Pakenham, and the relocation of those operations to Koonwarra.

The articles stressed the positive benefits to South Gippsland in this move.

However, nowhere did I see any acknowledgement of the impacts of this move on the local population.

I refer in particular to the conservatively estimated additional 1000 B-double truck movements per week along the South Gippsland Highway, thereby exacerbating the traffic issues in Korumburra, Leongatha and elsewhere.

But wait, there’s more!

The commencement of works on the several offshore wind farms off the coast of both South Gippsland and Wellington shires will create an enormous amount of extra heavy traffic, which will continue for a decade or more.

Then there is the Marinus project, the undersea and underground electricity cable to sell Tasmanian electricity to the mainland. Much of the heavy traffic for this project will also use the South Gippsland Highway.

And then there is the de-commissioning of many of the offshore oil and gas platforms in Bass Strait. This work will continue for decades, again creating much heavy traffic along the South Gippsland Highway.

And then there is the likely decommissioning of the Toora wind farm – also creating heavy vehicle traffic on the highway.

Note: Each one of the potentially hundreds of offshore turbines will on its own generate more electricity than all 11 of the Toora turbines combined!

I hope that someone somewhere is planning for the combined impacts of all these projects on the South Gippsland Highway.

I presume each of these projects is required to carry out a Traffic Impact Assessment as part of the permit process, but who is looking at the big picture?

The State Government must take responsibility for all these matters, and not leave it to the South Gippsland and Wellington shires to pick up the pieces of the dislocation that could occur.

I trust that the South Gippsland Sentinel Times will monitor these issues.

Nigel Hutchinson-Brooks, Korumburra

Editor’s note: The Sentinel-Times carried an article recently titled ‘Saleyards expansion puts more pressure on Kamikaze Corner’ highlighting the long-running campaign by Gippsland South MP Danny O’Brien to get funding for Stage 2 of the Leongatha bypass.