The Daily Examiner, Letter to the Editor, 10 July 2018,
p.13:
So Road and Maritime
Services intends to establish a temporary asphalt batching plant at Woombah with
a heavy truck access road crossing Iluka Road approximately 230 metres from the
Pacific Highway T-intersection.
One couldn’t choose a
site more unsafe for private vehicles and more disruptive to tourist traffic.
One that also is less than 500 metres from a waterway which empties into the
Clarence River Estuary.
One couldn’t find a more
inadequate approach to community consultation.
The Pillar Valley
community were given an RMS community information session scheduled to last one
and a half hours in May 2016 ahead of construction of a temporary batching
plant there.
In September 2016 the
Donnellyville community received a detailed 5-page information document at
least a month ahead of construction and this included an aerial map showing
infrastructure layout within the proposed temporary batching plant site. Up
front the community was allotted two drop-in information sessions.
Most of the residents
in Woombah and Iluka appear to have found out about the proposed
temporary plant planned for Woombah in July 2018, the same month
construction is due to start.
This plant will be in
use for the next two and a half years but only a few residents were given some
rudimentary information in a 3-page document and initially the community was not
even offered a drop-in information session.
Perhaps the NSW Minister
for Roads Maritime and Freight, Melinda Pavey, and Roads and Maritime Services
might like to explain the haphazard, belated approach taken to informing the
communities of Woombah and Iluka of the proposed plant.
The people of Woombah and
Iluka deserve better. They deserve a formal information night which canvasses
all the issues, with representatives from RMS and the Pacific Highway project
team prepared to address concerns and answer questions, as well as a
representative of the Minister for Roads, Maritime and Freight in attendance as
an observer.
They don’t deserve to be
fobbed off with a quick patch-up, comprising a drop-in information session and
one RMS representative deciding to attend a local community run meeting.
I’m sure that all
residents and business owners in both Woombah and Iluka would
appreciate a departmental re-think of this situation.
Judith Melville, Yamba
It is also beginning to look as though Roads and Maritime Services is only just getting around to meeting with Clarence Valley shire councillors as a group this week to brief them on the asphalt batching plant site.
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