Ecological Assessment (EA)

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Ecological Assessment (EA)

Director Strategic Planning and Assessment NSW Department of Planning GPO BOX 39 Sydney 2001

Objection to'Middle Camp' Site, Catherine Hill Bay - State Significant Site and Project Applications (MP 07_0095) by Coal & Allied Operations Pty Ltd

Barry Laing

15 Kendall Road

Castle Cove 2069

Contents

Background and rationale for objection...... 2 Strategic Justification deficiencies:...... 4 Environmental Assessment deficiencies...... 5 Heritage Impact Assessment deficiencies:...... 8 Conclusion...... 9

Objection to MP 07_0095 Catherine Hill Bay C&A Barry Laing Page 1 of 10 Background and rationale for objection I object to the Catherine Hill Bay/Middle Camp Concept Plan (MP 07_0095) of Coal and Allied Operations Pty Ltd, for the reasons detailed in my submission, below, which addresses some of the Director-General’s Requirements. My mother, Mrs Jewel Laing lives at 2 Clarke St Catherine Hill Bay (CHB) and is 87 years old. I have written this submission to include her views also. For simplicity I will comment on the Concept Plan document and its Environmental Assessment Reports and various associated documents as if they were the one document, unless I make a specific page reference.

My parents have owned 2 Clarke St CHB since 1965 and lived there since 1977. I have been either a part-time resident of or visitor to the Bay for the past 44 years, since 1964. My brother also owns a house in Clarke St.

I strongly oppose this application because it threatens the unique community character, scenic amenity, heritage and conservation values for which I go there and which will be my inheritance, and which are embodied in the existing zonings of the subject land..

State and Local government development processes have served the area well with integrity for many years and still could provide appropriate levels of development in CHB. The State interests which remain protected at Middle Camp until such time as the current Planning Minister allows the dismantling of those controls under the major project legislation Part 3A, are: 1. The conserved coastal hinterland which is protected by the Coastal Policy, the recent dedication of the Wallarah National Park, the long-standing conservation zonings of lands owned by C&A, and the “controlled action” provisions of the Commonwealth’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. 2. The unique coastal mining company village including Middle Camp, Sawmill Camp and the southern half of the village with coal loading jetty, all currently protected by local or state heritage controls and guidelines. 3. Bush regeneration and mine rehabilitation, which is returning the mining areas to their former state. 4. A thriving community maintaining this heritage and environmental asset whose average period of residence is 17 years (at 1/2007), and who cost the State very little in infrastructure. These interests are of long-term value and have been preserved by the State until now but once lost are gone forever.

I deplore the proponent’s disrespect for environment zonings and disregard in this plan for public values and community cohesion. The proponent exploited this land for many years, with several zonings which prohibit residential development, so the company knew it was not allowed to develop the land once mining finished. Now by offering to relinquish most of those parts which have always been subject to prohibitive zonings, the developer asserts that its strategy is of state significance. On doing so the proponent could win a huge windfall profit from the plan‘s developments, regardless of the impact of the proposal on the local area due to the removal of the regulatory controls.

Objection to MP 07_0095 Catherine Hill Bay C&A Barry Laing Page 2 of 10 The developer is making ambit claims for development, disregarding the impact of its business strategy on the local community, ignoring repeated rejections by a broad cross-section of people in the local and wider community and engaging in no meaningful consultation. The State of NSW should not be assisting such a company.

The State should dismiss this plan completely for the sake of our descendents and to respect our communal values. The fact that thousands of objections are sent from all over Australia and the world to the Minister’s panel about this and the adjacent development proposals, when the numbers are usually in the tens or at most, hundreds, should surely give a clear message to the Minister of the insult this project represents to the past, present and future communities of NSW.

I support the Catherine Hill Bay Progress Association’s objection to this plan.

My objections are detailed in the following pages.

Objection to MP 07_0095 Catherine Hill Bay C&A Barry Laing Page 3 of 10 Strategic Justification deficiencies: The Concept Plan begins by asserting in the executive summary on page 5 that 300 houses at Catherine Hill Bay is significant to the Lower Hunter Regional Strategy, with its plan for well over 100,000 homes in the lower Hunter. To say that 300 houses out of over 100,000 is significant is patently absurd. If the required 300 sites were included at Minmi for instance, with its 6312 dwellings, that would only increase its density by 4.7%, which is hardly significant and thus obviously achievable. C&A’s implication that the CHB objectives could not be achieved in less valuable and thus more appropriate locations elsewhere is unsupportable.

It is a discouraging task to wade through the vast detail of sections 4 (The Development Description) and 5 (The Environmental Planning Assessment) of the Concept Plan when it is all based on a conceit; that the reader is completely ignorant of the fact that the development area has been protected for many years by various zonings and is already a secure, contiguous conservation area under those controls.

This conceit by C&A includes an assumption that the reader, being ignorant of the reality, will applaud the company’s intentions in sentences like It should be recognised that the ‘do nothing’ scenario has been considered and dismissed as a realistic option since this will not achieve the conservation outcomes sought under the LHRS and draft Lower Hunter Regional Conservation Plan and The development of the three sites in return for 849ha of conservation land dedication is crucial in achieving the state government’s objective of securing major conservation corridors, most notably the Wallarah Peninsula Corridor. and The substantial dedication of land to NSWG will also ensure this land will be protected from inappropriate development by locking away this land as ‘conservation land’ in public ownership and [sic] perpetuity. [CP Section 4.2 page 25] Of course, an aware reader will know that the security of the conservation lands is far better at present than it would be under this proposal. Those lands are protected from inappropriate development by local government controls aligned to statewide planning instruments, which have prevented high density development so far. That’s the so-called …‘do nothing’ scenario… so lightly dismissed by C&A!

C&A has worked their leases while the prohibitive zonings prevailed, with, until the minister’s intervention and the MOU, no real expectation of further profit because of the zonings. The concept plan cannot argue logically both that its development and offsets are necessary and that the zonings should be removed to prevent inappropriate development. The protective zonings do exist, the developments are not necessary to protect the Wallarah National Park and development of this scale will negatively impact on the values which gave rise to the zonings.

C&A tries to use this conceit to disguise the untruthful representation it constructs in its statement on page 25: It is therefore important that Catherine Hill Bay be considered in a coordinated manner by NSWG to achieve permanent preservation of the

Objection to MP 07_0095 Catherine Hill Bay C&A Barry Laing Page 4 of 10 Wallarah Peninsula conservation corridor. Given that overall environmental land offset package for the Lower Hunter by Coal & Allied span four local government areas, the environmental gains to the community would not be achieved if each site was separately considered by the individual Councils. In fact, the establishment of the protective policies and zonings has been at state level and so is already spanning the four local government areas. The concept plan is absolutely unnecessary for the achievement of environmental gains already secured!

Environmental Assessment deficiencies The plan is deficient in framing a generalisation set in the short-term to cover up the inevitable destruction of conservation values in bushland under regeneration, particularly Area C, by asserting that Option 3 uses merely areas …where the land is predominantly cleared of vegetation. (CP Page 27) and …disturbed areas of lesser ecological quality (Page 37).

Most of these areas are regenerating subsequent to the cessation of mining years or decades ago, and this long-term view is not considered in the environmental assessment. The periphery of the other areas A, B and D is the regeneration margin essential to bush regrowth, not simply a line on a drawing. There is even a rather frank suggestion in acknowledgement of the development’s Key Threatening Processes, that when clearing takes place, an ecologist should be present for … selective relocation of dead trees and logs into conservation lands… ahead of the bulldozers! (page 97, Ecological Assessment Report)

Another thread of spin in the Concept plan is the notion of quantum of dedication of offset lands versus quality of dedication. On page 25, the word corridor is used six times in stating how vitally important the area is for the ecology of the Wallarah Peninsula. In other words, the shape of the conservation lands offsets is the key value, supporting a contiguous wildlife area.

In contrast, the rest of the ecological assessment almost exclusively discusses only the quantum and the individual species impacts, not the shape of what is left after development, nor the impact of 300 houses on the adjacent conservation lands. The plan gives no criteria by which the maintenance of an effective corridor can be judged. The reader is left uninformed about exactly how the vital contiguity will be preserved in the face of development, notwithstanding the comforting tone of the ecological assessment.

It is as plain as day when looking at the Concept plan maps, that Area B forms a wall east to west extending half way across the middle of the presumed corridor towards the Pacific Highway’s western barrier, and areas C, A and D do likewise in other directions. In exclusively framing its argument on the basis of quantum not shape, the plan is quite deficient in not showing how the offsets will maintain the corridor which is recognised as the key value.

An example of this spin is the reference to koala habitat on page 36: The likely level of impact within the proposed development is assessed to be low as those areas representing potential foraging habitat for the Koala will be retained within the current proposal. In this respect, it is unlikely that the current proposal will represent a significant threat to local populations of this species.

Objection to MP 07_0095 Catherine Hill Bay C&A Barry Laing Page 5 of 10 This is deficient in neglecting to mention that while the habitat may be retained, access to it and within it will be split by blocks of housing into virtually separate compartments. No process is described by which C&A will ensure that it remains viable after development.

The Area B development will change the shape of the park and cut the essential wildlife corridor by more than half, from about 900m wide to under 300m wide and maybe less. The language of the EA distracts from the real story. The EA has repeated key phrases as if they were established fact, when they are mere assertions; eg in pages 5-104, more than 50 times the phrase …[existing flora/fauna] will be retained/conserved /protected/ reserved/ secured in the conservation lands… is used, as if that protection is a given, which ignores issues that mean protection cannot be guaranteed.

The particular issue is the zone of proximity of the conservation areas to roads, housing, weed concentrations, human incursions and animals introduced by residents. Consider the road effects on the remaining corridor, which are not quantified in the EA but this alternative opinion from Parks Victoria says they should be: It is important to consider the contribution of roads to the increasing fragmentation of habitats, particularly for species that may react negatively to roads as physical, behavioural or sociological barriers. The associated possibility of genetic isolation of animal populations is also important. (Ecological Effects of Roads, Parks Victoria 2004, p 25) The road effect zone is defined by the distance to which each different ecological road impact extends outward (Forman 1999). These distances differ for each impact, ranging from a few metres to over a kilometre from... the road The road effects zone averages 600 m in width (Ecological Effects of Roads, Parks Victoria 2004, p 47.

Additional to the road effect is the impact of humans, night light, weeds and pets on the corridor so that the cumulative effect is potentially devastating to the Wallarah NP. In the diagram below the pink area is indicative of the effects zones unquantified by C&A in this proposal. (see below)

Objection to MP 07_0095 Catherine Hill Bay C&A Barry Laing Page 6 of 10 This photo of the whole village from Google Earth gives an impression of the impact zones around the C&A and Rose Group developments. The top half is the C&A area and the possible closing off of the wildlife corridor particularly at the western side of each development, is obvious.

C&As concept plan does not address this possible complete closing-off of the Wallarah NP corridor by its development. Instead, C&A makes repeated unsubstantiated assertions, for example in the EA Part 5.2.1, page 88; As the majority of the habitat will be conserved it is considered unlikely that any impact will be significant. which completely obscures the issue of the geometric shape of the habitats, and the road and development impact haloes. The wetlands and swamp forest north of Area D for instance, are recognised as under threat from runoff, stormwater and siltation, in the Ecological Assessment Report Table 5.1. The report is deficient in repeatedly asserting without evidence or rational argument, that because much of each foraging area, habitat, suitable soil etc., exists elsewhere in the conservation lands, the risks to wildlife can generally be dismissed.

A specific component of the halo effect of the development is the impact of pets and feral animals, which is not meaningfully addressed in the EA. The EA dismisses this in one paragraph which, if it were not a serious abrogation of responsibility for the conservation lands, would be laughable; 7. Predation by feral cats The increase of residential development within the area has the potential to increase opportunities for the KTP “Predation by feral cats”. This KTP is unlikely to significantly impact upon local wildlife provided responsible pet

Objection to MP 07_0095 Catherine Hill Bay C&A Barry Laing Page 7 of 10 ownership is adopted [my emphasis]. (Ecological Assessment Report, Page 97)

C&A’s bland reliance on responsible pet ownership to protect the Wallarah National Park from impact flies in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Pets and pets gone feral are recognised as a serious problem in parks, exemplified in this NPWS Press release, 19/7/05: The NPWS has invested considerable effort over the years into raising the conservation message regarding the inappropriateness of having dogs in national parks, however it is likely that some neighbours are unaware that their pets are roaming [into Ku-ring-gai Chase NP] at night.

Dogs and cats pose a threat to the conservation areas which is not addressed in the EA even though feral cats are a Key Threatening Process and the number of pets from 300 dwellings will be considerable. (Laing, 2007, Submission against MP 06- 0330). So it is arguable that the offset values which are ascribed in the concept plan to the conservation areas and on which C&A’s memorandum of understanding depends, may be significantly destroyed within a few years.

No information is provided so that the Director-General could estimate the value of the conservation lands once all impacts of development and roads are assessed. The Concept plan does not value the conservation lands as they are now, nor does it give estimates of the reduction in value due to the impact of its development. This leaves the panel and minister uninformed about whether the offset lands will actually be of benefit to the state. The proposal is seriously deficient in this fundamental issue and should be rejected.

The area’s current conservation zonings guarantee benefit to the state and should be maintained.

Heritage Impact Assessment deficiencies: The Middle Camp area of Catherine Hill Bay is a unique whole community, to be swamped by new housing under this plan. It has a well-preserved company town ribbon layout which is the key value to be preserved. This is not to deny the value of individual houses, public buildings, industrial relics, but to recognise that the whole village has value for our heritage, as do Hill End or Sofala, for instance. The photo below based on a 2004 aerial picture shows the approximate C&A development areas surrounding and dwarfing the ribbon village, obliterating its essential value.

Objection to MP 07_0095 Catherine Hill Bay C&A Barry Laing Page 8 of 10 The Heritage Impact Assessment mentions that Lake Macquarie LEP, Hunter REP and National Trust heritage listing currently applies for the village and specific items, but this is blandly dismissed in the HIA with heritage values will be respected and conserved The National Trust is quoted: A company town ...valuable as ...strong townscape character ... should respect this and historic evidence it presents... (p53, Heritage IA) However the HIA simply says the view catchment of the Conservation Area needs to be carefully considered, while it finds no issue in the completely overpowering development inconsistent with the company town ribbon layout so valuable as our heritage.

The HIA cumulative impacts statement (p108) acknowledges that this development (and the Rose one to the south) will result in a change to the local area through an increase in the built areas. Then it restricts itself to mainly considering the view impact, neglecting the complete transformation of a company town to a conglomeration of large blobs of new houses surrounding the original ribbon of miners’ houses and heritage items noted in the report, particularly the E pit area. The HIA asserts with little reference to evidence that this will be largely offset by the (unspecified) positive heritage outcomes. Without this discussion the Concept Plan is seriously deficient and should be rejected.

Conclusion These aspects of the deficiencies in the Concept Plan illustrate that it is insufficient basis for a decision. The stakes are too high in that the Minister’s decision could cause possible losses of public values and assets, for the sake of a paltry and inappropriate contribution to state housing needs.

Objection to MP 07_0095 Catherine Hill Bay C&A Barry Laing Page 9 of 10 The Concept Plan should be rejected by the Minister for Planning. Development at Catherine Hill Bay should respect the prevailing zonings, state planning instruments and Lake Macquarie City Council development guidelines.

Barry Laing

28 February 2008

Objection to MP 07_0095 Catherine Hill Bay C&A Barry Laing Page 10 of 10

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