2018-10-09 Services & Organisation Agenda

SERVICES & ORGANISATION COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA   9 OCTOBER 2018




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SERVICES & ORGANISATION COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                                              9 OCTOBER 2018

         Regional Facilities Plan for Difficult to Locate Sports (Consultation Draft - August 2018)

             3.3     MOTORISED WATER SPORTS

             Activities/ sports that fall within this category are:   > Availability of appropriate/ accessible water bodies
             » Wakeboarding                                             is the primary limiting factor for coverage of and
             > Jet ski racing                                           access to the activity, the size of these water areas
             » Ski Racing                                               and the associated land-based amenities/ facilities
             » Water skiing (jump, tricks, slalom)                      provides the limiting factor to the scale of events,
             » Barefoot skiing (jump, tricks, slalom)                   resulting in catchments for these sports being very
                                                                        large and extended travel to competitive events is
             Information from nine (9) motorised water sports           common.
             related  peak/  State  level  organisations, regional    » Noosa and Maroochy Rivers (in particular) are
             associations and local clubs indicated that current and    experiencing high levels of adjacent environmental,
             emerging trends impacting (or potentially impacting)       rural and urban land use, which means that it
             on motorised water sports are as follows:                  is problematic to assign a dedicated space for
             » The Queensland climate makes most of the State           competitive motorised water sports, which create a
                conducive to year round skiing;                         range of impacts. As development continues within
             » Participants in the various disciplines are largely      the catchments, further use and development
                oriented around family groups, with ages ranging        of the rivers will focus on increased shared use
                between 8yo and the mid-70's;                           which prohibits the speeds and noise impacts of
             » The majority of participation is recreational;           motorised water sport. Additional provision of
             » The focus of participants is to build on and better      moorings and marinas, and recreational paddle or
               their own performance;                                   fishing access is likely to prevail.
             » Approximately 5% of members/ participants are          » Water skiing and related sports have indicated that
                estimated to be classified as participating within      they would like to have a competition facility within
               the elite competition levels.                            the region. However, they acknowledge that none
                                                                        of the existing recreational or club use areas are
             3.3.1   Need for Regional Facilities                       able to support competitive use.
             While water sports and the various disciplines have      » The most promising option for long term
             little in the way of facility plans, there are some issues investigation of a motorised water sport site is the
             and needs which did emerge from the investigation:         re-use of an exhausted resource extraction site
             » Different water sports require different water body      (quarries). A brief overview of inactive extraction
                and access characteristics. River, lake and ocean       sites located in and across the Sunshine Coast
               water bodies can be used for diverse activities,         Council area indicates that most are either too
                however, the majority of demand is for recreational     small for development of motorised water sports
               access. Competitive uses can vary but generally          or will not contain water bodies as part of final
               they require both launching facilities and spectator     void planning. An example of an exhausted (or
                areas.                                                  previous extraction site) that has been used for
             » In general, the key facility locations are lakes,        motorised water sports is Marshalls Ski Lakes and
                rivers and ocean areas, but some artificial facilities  Camping site adjacent to the Bruce Highway in
                constructed for wakeboarding, skiing and jet boat       Chevallum, however the area of water on this site is
                racing can accommodate both recreation and              insufficient to support competitive uses. Previous
                competition uses.                                       investigations identified a number of candidate
             » Key elements for competition use are the amount/         sites however all had limitations as to the scale of
               area of water available and access for spectators to     activity they could support. Across the study area
               view the event.                                          a dedicated study may be able to find a number of
             » The existing lakes and water storages are                candidate sites where proactive post-use planning
                insufficient in size for potential spectator            can allow for an eventual use for water sport.
               facilities and have limited potential for additional
                infrastructure to support competitive use.

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