The Americans have a quaint saying, “nickel and dimed to death” meaning destroying bit by bit, which is what Noosa is experiencing under management of our mega council.  Since amalgamation in 2008 services have declined, response time for local issues have blown out, and Noosa residents often experience great difficulty in making contact with decision makers in this council.

The Transit Centre emerging from the ashes of what used to be an attractive tree lined entrance to Noosa is a glimpse of what our future might look like.  This huge apparition looks like something out of a science fiction horror film.  It might be suitable for a bus stop in heavily populated centres like Brisbane but is most unsuited for the ‘low key’ green environment of Noosa.  Worse, every visitor to Noosa must pass this ugly structure to get to the centre of town and already it’s becoming a traffic nightmare and the busses haven’t even begun using it. Drive down Sunshine Beach Road between 8:30 and 9:00am any morning of the week and you will be backed up to the traffic lights at Solway Drive.

And how about the new guard rail lining the Park Road boardwalk to Noosa’s National Park?  Is it only me or do others also think it looks more like a Jakarta cattle chute than a user friendly eco walkway to our beautiful park?

So what’s happening to our natural laid back relaxed community that historically influenced and guided council policy in the interests of Noosa residents and visitors?  Well, for the moment, we as residents and business operators have little say in the way Noosa is being managed being a minority participant in a mega council.  With only two representatives on a council of twelve we can no longer determine our future.

A future that has been further jeopardized through the damage inflicted upon long term local businesses by a council based 40 kilometres to the south.  Beach businesses that were pioneered and developed by locals over a long period of time were recently put through a shoddy tender process which, among other things, gave no weighting to the time, money and years of development by their founders.

It wasn’t only the beach businesses affected as others like contractors to council for  maintenance of parks and gardens also lost their business to operators outside the Sunshine Coast. Even a local tree lopping firm doing council work lost out to a Gold Coast business causing local job losses at a time when our economy is under great stress with jobs at a premium.

But without doubt the worst example of a total council ‘balls up’ would have to be the tender or to be more accurate ‘expressions of interest’  sought by the Sunshine Coast Council for the extraction of methane gas from Coast landfills and converting it to energy.  Landfill Gas Industries (LGI) a Noosaville company that has spent years developing leading edge technology for the abatement of methane gas from landfills and whose founder is recognised as one of the world’s leading landfill gas to energy experts responded  with a detailed tender.  The tenderers were next asked for a ‘preliminary submission’ setting out a full solution should they be awarded the rights to the gas.  The LGI submission included installing extraction, flaring, monitoring systems then building, owning and operating a small scale power station on the Caloundra, Nambour and Noosa landfills at no cost to council.    Their submission included carbon offsets from the waste (worth around $450,000 per annum to be split with council) planting 15000 trees and installing a cutting edge environmentally friendly waste heat recovery unit on the Nambour power station in order to provide  cheap heat and green power to another nearby Sunshine Coast business.

The next thing LGI heard from council was the tender was awarded to an interstate company that according to LGI, (based on conversations with SCRC staff) offered considerably less value to council and has no local presence.  So the CEO wrote to the Mayor, Bob Abbot and sought his intervention by calling for an independent review as the offers are highly complex requiring an understanding of the industry to truly determine which provides the best economic outcome for council.  This letter was sent to the Mayor on the 16th of June. LGI has heard nothing since, not even a receipt of letter acknowledgement.

Noosa it appears will once again miss out through the incompetency of the ‘Maroochy politburo’ because LGI, who planned on carrying out R&D trials on the Noosa landfill will now be forced to move their business to Brisbane meaning further loss of employment in Noosa.
Even more damning is the loss of a potential global business based in Noosa as LGI already has an operation in the US and has further international expansion plans on the drawing board.  Moreover it’s a business that perfectly fits the Noosa DNA. Being a Biosphere Reserve what better business to have locally than one that offers a treatment for carbon abatement and its conversion to low cost green energy?

We thought the appearance of an Orange coffee kiosk on the Marcus beach car park a few months ago was an outrage, but that pales into insignificance in comparison to the loss of a business with this potential.