THE anger over the location of the new hospital has been getting fiercer, and spreading wider across the shire.

Residents are horrified by what they see as bringing the Gold Coast sprawl south of the river with this massive hospital development. With 2700 hospital staff, plus patients and associated services, there is no doubt the intensity of this development will destroy the low-key character of the shire forever unless better placed.

With one disastrous decision such as this, the years of hard work to stop the over-development will be lost and the domino effect will spread like cancer down the coast.

There have been numerous attempts over the years to develop the State Significant Farmlands, each one more insidious than the last.

Developers have been tying up large swathes of these State Significant Farmlands just waiting for a sympathetic, pro developer government to rezone it for urban development.

These farmlands are an easy target for any unsuspecting government planner without the imagination or respect for this magnificent red soil country to fall into the trap.

The farmers, and those who value the State Significant Farmlands, are furious for good reason.

The Northern Rivers Farmland Protection Project Report 2005, reviewed by the CSIRO, states: "It must be noted that the threshold for state significance is very high compared with other jurisdictions.”

The Cudgen Plateau is the only area that has such classification in this shire. The report considered a minimum area of 500 hectares containing exemplary farmland characteristics was necessary to ensure a viable farming area and warrant classification of State Significance.

This area of State Significant Farmland has 554ha but around 100ha is being land-banked by developers and not in production. The loss of a further 16ha of farmland that is in active production is devastating, and potential further flow-on effects of the hospital are likely to sterilise even more of the farmlands.

This could risk the loss of this State Significant classification and potentially destroy the viability of this whole farmland area, leaving it ripe for a developers' bonanza.

With the secrecy over the fate of the existing Tweed Hospital, Tweed Heads residents fearing closure have also joined the furious objectors. It has long been the custom for residents around the shire to down-size in their senior years and move closer to the Tweed Heads hospital for their high-needs healthcare in later life.

Claims by the state's health planners that a Cudgen Hospital will be within 30 minutes of 70 per cent of residents fails to take into account the far more frequent use by these seniors.

Thousands of seniors have invested their life savings into the Tweed Heads area for the security of living close to the hospital. The potential of having their hospital ripped away from them is a significant social justice issue. These seniors should not have to contend with such a prospect in their twilight years.

The hospital could be expanded into the civic precinct to the west of the existing hospital and surrounding areas. There was a great suggestion that the road between these two blocks could also be closed and used.Council is in need of areas to expand for the library in the future and we could look at developing our old fire station site in Bay St.

It would only need a couple of levels of underground car parking or sacrificial floors to build the hospital up out of the Probable Maximum Flood.

In all the planning for the shire, including the latest North Coast Regional Plan 2016, there has never been any mention till now of a dire need for a hospital south of the river.

The new Byron hospital could be an option for Tweed's southern residents during flood times rather than make the established elderly community of Tweed Heads travel to Robina as the health planners suggest.

Let your local member, Geoff Provest, and the Minister for Health, Brad Hazzard, know what you think.

• Tweed Mayor Katie Milne submits an exclusive monthly column to the Tweed Daily News. To contact her, email KMilne@tweed.nsw.gov.au