Residents call for Aquis mega resort rejection from Yorkeys

As reported in the Cairns Post
Monday August 8, 2014

VISION: An artist's impression of the main entrance of the $8.15 billion Aquis Great Barrier Reef Resort at Yorkeys Knob.

A COMMUNITY group has recommended Queensland’s Co-ordinator General reject Aquis, claiming there is not enough known about the mega-resort’s social and environmental impact on Cairns.
The Aquis Aware Coalition of Concerned Citizens has publicly released its submission on the $8 million project’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).


You can read Aquis Aware's submission here: http://aquisaware.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/EIS-Submission.pdf

A lot of people are saying "go ahead & build, there will thousands of jobs (really) in earlier reports on this site it was stated that the Chinese Government are "demanding" that the Australian Government issue work visas for Chinese workers to be able to work on Chinese projects.

Read article here: http://www.cairnsvideonews.com/2014/05/can-these-people-make-up-their-minds.html

Residents really need to google the web and read all the  information that's available before agreeing that this project should go ahead as there are a number of problems that have arisen and no information has come forth.

At a recent Council meeting to discuss the EIS there have been concerns in regards to the infrastructure such as electricity, sewage, housing and roads with the developer now saying that he will pay only a portion of the costs which one has to ask how much is he willing to pay or are the residents going to have to foot the bill.

This is a report from the council meeting held on Tuesday August 5, 2014
One notable item from the meeting was that all councillors were "gagged" from making comment on the report and why wasn't it made public.

CAIRNS Regional Council is worried about a housing shortage if Aquis goes ahead, saying a deal needs to struck between it, the resort-casino’s developers and Queensland Government so the city doesn’t hit a population “brick wall”.
However, Cairns Mayor Bob Manning has not given any guarantees residents will not be burdened with a rate rise, only assuring the council will not be placed in an unfair financial position by the $8 billion development.
Submissions to Queensland’s Co-ordinator General in response to the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the mega-resort closed Wednesday August 6, 2014.

The project is to include artificial lakes, islands, eight hotels, a golf course, convention centre and two casinos.
At a special meeting yesterday, councillors unanimously endorsed the council’s EIS submission. The council also appointed the mayor as its sole spokesman on the submission, which Cr Manning said was to ensure there were no conflicting views about the issue.
While the council’s formal submission will remain under wraps, it has released a community statement, based on the submission.
The statement says there is need for further information about housing and infrastructure, particularly whether additional population associated with the development will have significant flow-on impacts for the city and state.
he EIS has estimated a construction workforce of up to 3750 people, with an operational workforce of about 20,000 people.
“This latter figure does not take into account the families of those workers, so a conservative estimate would put the total population demanded by the proposed development at around 25-30,000 people (additional to the planned growth of Cairns) – about the size of Gladstone,’’ the statement says.