The Hon. Frank Sartor 12 November 2005
Minister for Planning
Level 34, Governor Macquarie Tower
1 Farrer Place
SYDNEY NSW 2000

Email: office@sartor.minister.nsw.gov.au

MASTER PLAN AND SUBDIVISION, BARLINGS BEACH, TOMAKIN
DA 77-3-2002

Dear Mr Sartor

Under the SEPP 71 Coastal Protection policy your consent is required for this proposal to go ahead. Our Association urges you to withhold consent.

We set out numerous detailed reasons in our submissions to the Urban Assessments branch of DIPNR but, when one of our committee phoned this week, a spokesperson from the Dept of Planning led us to believe that all of those reasons are being ignored. For this reason we ask that this letter be dealt with by your office, not the Department of Planning.

Basically the land should be protected from urban development because of its significance to aboriginal heritage and because it is too low lying and subject to flooding and coastal hazards. The impacts of this development also need to be considered as part of the cumulative impacts of all other likely and proposed developments in the catchment of the creek which passes through the site.

Some of our other objections to the Master Plan include:

• Unless controls are incorporated in an LEP the development will be denser than described in the Master Plan (due to dual occupancies being permitted on all lots) with greater impacts on sewer, water, roads, conservation zones, etc. It appears the assessment team is considering allowing even more initial dwellings than in the Master Plan and road reserves have been made narrower.
• It justifies itself by proposing building and landscape design features which, while commendable, are unlikely to be achieved, mainly because they rely on the enforcement of covenants which are specifically over-ridden by the Shire's LEPs. Covenants will not work.
• It does not protect the required 100m buffer around the vegetation listed as SEPP 26 Littoral Rainforest instead there are house lots within the buffer.
• It significantly degrades the rest of the Banksia woodland which forms the buffer by requiring clearing of all smaller trees and shrubs for bush fire protection.
• It ignores recommendations by the Coastal Council and its own weed management study for roads between houses and protected spaces.
• The buffer zone to the dune is inadequate and building setbacks to the foreshore reserve are only half that required in Council's Shire-wide Residential Design Code.
• There is no recognition of the impact the development will have on the Tomaga River estuary where boats are already damaging seagrass beds and contributing to severe bank erosion.
• All construction traffic should be prevented from using streets in the existing Tomakin village. It appears that the consent may be conditioned to require construction traffic to use a new access but there is no effective way of enforcing trucks to use this longer route. A new access road from George Bass Drive should be the only access until the final stage of the development is completed.
• The Master Plan proposes placing up to 1.5 metres of fill on the residential part of the site - this will require thousands of truck movements and, depending on the fill, could affect drainage

We urge you to refuse development consent or, at the very least, ensure the development is modified to overcome the problems stated above.

Yours sincerely

Jenny Edwards
Secretary