Parts 1 and 2 covered the planning and financial picture. Part 3 is about the physical environment — specifically, where the wind goes. The answer changes depending on the season, and some of the communities it points to aren’t being talked to at all.
The Winter Picture — Beaudesert in the Crosshairs
During the southern hemisphere winter, the subtropical ridge moves equatorward and a greater proportion of SEQ is subject to westerly and south-westerly winds. This is consistent with well-documented regional BoM seasonal data and is not disputed meteorology.
The Bromelton SDA sits approximately 6km west of Beaudesert town centre. During winter months, prevailing winds travel directly east across that gap — across the Mt Lindesay Highway corridor — into the main residential zones of Beaudesert and north toward Gleneagle.
This isn’t a fringe concern. Six kilometres is not a buffer. It’s a commute. At typical prevailing wind speeds for the region, that distance represents minutes of travel time for airborne particles, not hours. Any meaningful air quality assessment of this facility has to account for the winter wind vector pointing directly at the region’s primary residential growth zone.
Six kilometres is not a buffer. During winter, it’s the distance between the stack and Beaudesert’s front door.
The Summer Picture — The Communities Nobody’s Talking About
During summer, south-easterly trade winds dominate SEQ. The wind direction reverses relative to winter — drift from a source at Bromelton would travel north-west, toward Allenview and up through the Flinders Peak / Peak Crossing corridor.
These communities are rarely mentioned in the BERC public debate. They’re not in Cleanaway’s consultation framing. They don’t appear prominently in planning documents. But the wind doesn’t check the consultation mailing list before it blows.
Allenview sits north-north-west of Beaudesert. Peak Crossing is further up that same north-west corridor, roughly 54km from Beaudesert by road but placed by geography directly in the summer drift path from Bromelton. These communities deserve to know they appear in this picture, because right now most of them don’t.
The Flinders Peak Group sits at 679 metres and creates its own local wind effects — terrain can funnel, deflect, or concentrate drift in ways that flat-land dispersion models don’t fully capture. That’s exactly the kind of local complexity that needs to be in the EIS, at a resolution that actually means something to individual communities.
The Transitional Months — No One Gets a Pass
During transitional months, the wind regime is genuinely variable. Morning south-easterlies commonly give way to afternoon sea-breeze-driven northerlies or westerlies. The drift path rotates across the surrounding basin depending on the time of day and the synoptic setup on any given day.
In practical terms, this means that during roughly six months of the year, every community in the region is at some point downwind of the facility. There’s no consistent upwind safe zone during these months.
- →Has the EIS dispersion modelling been run for all four seasons separately — and are results available by named community?
- →What stack height is modelled, and at what emissions temperature and velocity?
- →Does the modelling account for seasonal wind reversal — specifically the winter west/south-westerly pattern pushing toward Beaudesert and Gleneagle?
- →Has the north-west summer drift toward Allenview and the Peak Crossing corridor been modelled and assessed?
- →What are the predicted ground-level concentrations of PM2.5, dioxins, and heavy metals at the nearest sensitive receptors in each season?
- →What real-time monitoring will be in place, where will the monitoring stations be located, and will the data be publicly accessible as it’s collected?
Primary sources: Bureau of Meteorology — Average Monthly Wind Velocity Maps (bom.gov.au); BoM Climate Factors — Subtropical Ridge and Trade Wind patterns; Wiesner et al. (2024) “Subtropical Foehn Winds, Southeast Queensland, Australia”, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. Community coordinates: Wikipedia GeoHack verified data for Allenview, Peak Crossing, Flinders Peak Group.
Disclaimer: Wind drift paths described are based on prevailing seasonal wind direction from published BoM regional data. They do not constitute formal air quality dispersion modelling. Actual drift behaviour will vary with atmospheric stability class, stack parameters, terrain effects, and local meteorology. KC VICE is an independent advocacy and media platform. This article does not constitute scientific, environmental, legal or investment advice.
© KC VICE — kcvice.com.au — Published under public interest editorial mandate.