IT should surprise no one that there’s escalating hostility towards the prospect of the dumping of Sydney’s construction site waste in an old quarry at Newnes Junction.
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The application currently with Lithgow Council seeks approval to dump 1.5 million cubic metres of all manner of stuff from government infrastructure projects around Sydney.
No doubt a nice little windfall for the quarry owner but a potential ‘socially irresponsible nightmare’ for the residents of Sandham Road.
This could be the thin edge of a very big wedge and decision makers will need to tread warily. Quarries and other mining applications routinely carry a rehabilitation clause in the development approval.
What is proposed for the Bell site hardly fits the accepted criteria of ‘rehabilitation’. The real issue is that if a precedence is set here it will be virtually impossible to reject the other applications that will surely follow once the genie is out of the bottle.
Strange bedfellows
IT’S no secret that politics at all levels breeds strange bedfellows. But even by that fact of life it seemed to many a curious move by Lithgow Council representatives to hop beneath the doona with the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.
Council hopped borders to consult with the Shooters’ Member for Orange who came to office on a byelection protest vote.
Then it was off to Sydney for talks with party hierarchy. These fringe parties hold little influence in the big picture – unlike their ratbag National Rifle Association cousins in the USA – but with the Shooters’ stated mission the roll back of gun laws it’s surprising that thinking Australians would even consider them for a protest vote.
Welcome addition
LITHGOW’S lifestyle attractions received a nice boost at the weekend with the opening of Sharon and Ross Howard’s Gang Gang Gallery. Importantly it has transformed the old Theatre Royal milk bar that has stood empty and neglected for so many years.
Pleasingly the venue also includes a permanent home for a collection of secondary student art works.