IN HIS letter titled ‘The perfect storm for the Macleay catchment’, John Jeayes makes some rather bold statements, ie “the Macleay River is regarded as the second fastest flowing river in the world.” How does one measure the flow rate of a river? Is it done when the river is in flood or during a drought, or is it taken near the mouth of the river when the tide is coming in?
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If the Government intends clear felling 142,000 hectares of forest between Grafton and Taree and the straight-line distance from Grafton to Taree is 245 kilometres then the width of the clear felled strip would be 58km if none of that land hadn’t been clear felled before – but it has, so the clear felling will have to extend further.
As a light aircraft pilot, I have flown along and across this many times in the last 40 years and, despite all the dire predictions, I haven’t noticed any significant loss of forest yet. If anything, with the good management it gets and plantations, it has thickened up.
As for antimony and arsenic tailings left by mining at the head of part of the Macleay catchment, these are naturally occurring substances.
Barrie Bishton, Euroka
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