Lakes Eco Spring (sic) Report
GH 22 December 2005

by Mike Leggatt (Vice Chairman)

The executive committee of the Wilderness and Lakes Environmental Action Forum would like to express our extreme dissatisfaction with the timing of the release of this report.

It was released to the public on 15 December, the very day that HilLand and Associates closed their doors for their Christmas Holiday. Attempts to find the portions that are supposedly digitally available have proved fruitless and until the 9th of January there is no one at the HilLand to assist.

Added to this, three of the four places where the report is available were closed to the public from the 23rd Dec till 3rd Jan, which means the only copy available to the public at that time was at the Wilderness Tourism Office.

Given the size of the report, the enormous scale of the proposed development, the problems of access to information, and the disruptions of the festive season, we requested an extension to the comment period. This was turned down by HilLand, leaving our Christmas Holiday over-shadowed by this report.

We call on the authorities NOT TO ALLOW the release of such documents over the festive season in future years.

We reject the notion that the document was released at that time in order to allow I&AP,s visiting the area the opportunity to study the document, if for no other reason than that neither the report nor the consultants are easily available.

If a Public Participation Process is to be meaningful, then it is imperative that the public are given adequate time at a reasonable period to comment on documents. In this case the public will have to study hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of information on the process to date.

Once again, we call on HilLand to extend the process for comment until at least the end of February, and to issue active I&AP’s with their own copies of the report. It is regrettable that we have to wait until the 9th of January for a response.