An example of what land clearing and landfilling looks like in the small coastal town of Yamba in Northern NSW

THEN

Section of WEST YAMBA URBAN RELEASE AREA to the west (left) of Carrs Drive from below Harold Tory Drive down to Miles Street. IMAGE: Google Earth. Click on image to enlarge

The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 2007:

Plans to build 1100 homes on a flood plain have triggered a wave of worry, writes Linton Besser.

FOR 250 kilometres, the Clarence River snakes through northern NSW before it meets the coast at Yamba.

There, during heavy rain and high tide, the estuary spills its briny current over a huge flood plain just west of the town. The 340 or so hectares of salt marsh, melaleuca forest and mangrove swamp act like a giant sieve, filtering the floodwaters as they make their way into Lake Wooloweyah to the south.

Now though, the Clarence Valley Council is one vote away from rezoning the West Yamba flood plain and turning it into a busy residential area.

In a monumental decision, the council has foreshadowed dumping 270,000 truck loads of fill on the area to raise it high enough to make it habitable.

Council planners want the area to house a new population of 2700 people in 1100 dwellings, with development levies to pay for an overhauled sewerage scheme, roads and other infrastructure.

But green groups say the proposal, first mooted in 1995, will put Yamba at risk from rising sea levels, and represents a dramatic threat to the area's sensitive wetland ecology.

And even the proposal's architect, the council's environment and planning director, Rob Donges, acknowledges it is out of step with today's planning regime.

"There are acknowledged problems there. It is flood-prone, low-lying land with a high water table," he said. "We have never hidden the fact that if we were to start the process of West Yamba today there would be doubts as to whether council would proceed."

The council has not yet received the findings of a flood risk management plan, commissioned to examine the effects of altering the area's natural drainage corridors, but Mr Donges has recommended the draft local environment plan go ahead anyway.

He insists the wheel has turned too far to stop now……

NOTE: Former member of Maclean Shire Council & Clarence Valley Council senior planning staff, Mr. Donges now acts as a planning consultant, advising property development companies and assisting with their development applications. Applications he has been associated with include large-scale subdivisions in Yamba (including West Yamba), James Creek and elsewhere in the Clarence Valley. Mr. Donges has previously been involved with the West Yamba Urban Release Area as a local government employee.

NOW

Townes Contracting Group

Yamba Residential Developments

Carrs Drive 160 lot subdivision stage 1

Contract value: $12.5 million

150,000m3 of select fill 

Section of WEST YAMBA URBAN RELEASE AREA  that is currently being developed. IMAGE: Townes Contracting Group, 5 Riley Street, Tenterfield, NSW, 2372. Click on image to enlarge