Tamar: the inoperable cancer

Geoff Smedley
CERTAINLY no one can deny Errol Stewart’s concerns in regard to the almost complete loss of the Tamar river (Examiner 23rd. Feb.) and although being very worthy in verse, it is far too timid to prick the consciences of the pretenious few, and in turn be placed on the anonymous letter programme.
In answer to Errol’s reference of the area where the Tamar Yacht Club operated, now claiming only 200mm of water in the extinct channel at low tide, and the rivers four metre tide differential, it suggests to me that the 1.5 cumecs allowed to seep from the Trevallyn dam to its ultimate distruction directly north of home point is the only active source of water movement to that area today.

This really does make the dredging dirty word a farce (literaly as well as visually), it also surpasses all other reasons to call for an urgent legitamate enquirey into the matter while looking at perhaps a refund to the public purse of prolonged experimental wastage over the past decade or so.

A visit to Launceston Seaport? last weekend revealed the true epicentre of the dramatic decline in the Tamar estuary, this was backed up by plenty of public comment on this rather shock viewing, now an area of shame while telling the story in the most graphic of ways, a truly dramatic melt-down of this area has happened in the past decade and left with the very evident scars of neglect, shaded by expensive experiments that have not only failed the Tamar but have failed Launceston in a truly damaging way.

Even the saga of the C.H. Smith building (a 20 year old billboard of neglect) runs a poor second to this pitiless situation, while the inaffectivness of an elected administration to provide benifit, rather it sits silently and apparently proudly prevailing over this long term culture of inoperable cancer which has invaded the waterways of Launceston becomming far too entrenched to be ignored any further.

Geoff Smedley
Launceston