Human Impact at Hastings Point Hastings Point is a small settlement on the coast just south of Tweed Heads and the NSW border.

Human Impact at Hastings Point

Hastings Point is a small settlement on the coast just south of Tweed Heads and the NSW border. The effects have been largely felt at Hastings Point; human impact has been the cause of a great deal of damage to the abiotic and biotic factors of the surrounding environments such as the mangroves, rocky shore, and sand dunes. Hastings Point in the last 5 years to 10 years has been subject to a  great deal of negative development, corrupt council members which has resulted in sewage flooding, dredging , sewage into the creek, mangrove degradation, destruction of rocky shore environments and longshore drift. The mangroves are being destroyed for development; the rocky shores are suffering from people taking too many sea urchins and oysters which destroy the wildlife. The sand dunes have been degraded by humans walking all over the dunes which wear them down and have caused them to be so far back from the water. (3), (1) and (4)

One of the main concerns of human impact in Hastings Point is the residential and the commercial development that was approved by the corrupt council members and the development areas never underwent environmental checks which has led to a great deal of damage.  When unchecked development happens and sewage pipes get cracked, eutrophication can happen and decaying algae can build up and cause the water which the sewage has leaked into to become toxic. As a result of the decaying algae, large fish kills can occur because of the toxic water and change in pH. In the case of Hastings Point there is sewage leaking into the estuary but not constant enough or in large enough amounts to destroy the creek; if unchecked development were to continue then the estuary would become toxic and any organisms that live in there would die and the area would become unliveable for any future potential organisms wanting to live there. There are so many ways for humans to influence the environment and many of them are negative, longshore drift carries sand and can move the sand from dredging by currents carrying the sand. Sand dredging and longshore drift are other impacts occurring at Hastings Point and the result can be sand ending up in areas that it wasn’t intended to go, blocking the estuaries and the salinity levels increasing because of the dredging, this is killing the mangroves. Mangroves are able to tolerate a certain amount of salt, but the sand dredging adds new salt to the water and the mangroves aren’t able to cope and so they die. The mangroves are a habitat for many creatures such as White Bellied Eagles, Small Fish, Crabs and other small organisms.  If the environment for these organisms is destroyed the population densities of all these organisms will greatly reduce and reduce further if it continues, competition for food will also be greater because of organisms dying and competition for habitat as well. Cudgera Creek, one of the main areas that all this is happening also has it’s owns problems, the bridge/walkway that was built over the estuary caused silting in the creek bed and because of this the flow of water gets blocked up and when the water cannot flow through the creek it can cause flooding of Hastings Point. The silting of the creek is just another negative result that has been caused by human impact. (2), (1) and (4)