Truck movements, dust, noise, vibration and concerns for the environment will form the basis of objections to the development application to rehabilitate Bell Quarry, following a public meeting held at Dargan last week.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
About 50 people attended a public meeting on January 28 to discuss the plan to rehabilitation the existing Bell Quarry pit.
According to the development application, that process would be achieved by filling it with “virgin excavated natural material (ENM) and other clean fill material sourced from earthworks projects across Sydney and the local regional area”.
“The concerns people have depend on where they live," Dargan resident Morgan Boehringer said about the proposal.
“For some, it’s going to be the noise, the dust, safety for the school bus – local concerns. But then there is the greater environmental concern: what will the fill be made of and who is going to oversee this process to make sure there will not be asbestos and other contaminated waste going in?”
Blue Mountains City Council voted last week to make a submission against the application. The motion, put by Cr Kerry Brown, cited concerns around the transportation of 1.2 million cubic metres of fill from Sydney and around the Central West, “generating an average of 74 truck movements a day with up to nine an hour through Bell for around 15 years”.
The consent authority for the application will be Lithgow City Council and the Lithgow City Council and the Western Region Joint Regional Planning Panel.
READ MORE
A working group has been formed by citizens in the wake of last week’s meeting. Working party member and former truck driver Kaye Whitbread said nearby residents had significant concerns about the dust, noise and traffic to be generated by the trucks themselves and earth works on site.
“The sheer volume of trucks would be phenomenal,” she said.
“Dust gets kicked up and will end up in our water supply – we’ve only got our rain water to rely on,” she said.
She said she had significant concerns about the proposal’s detail, including the size of trucks and their frequency along Sandham Road.
“You can imagine if there was a hold up in Sydney due to inclement weather one day, there could be double the numbers of trucks on the road the next,” Mrs Whitbread said.
Residents were also concerned about the impact dust generated by trucks could have on local eateries and accommodation outlets along Sandham Road, including the Monkey Creek Cafe and Gallery and Hatters’ Hideout B&B.
Both the working party and Blue Mountains City Council have requested an extension to the exhibition period, which is due to finish on February 18.
While the quarry itself is within Lithgow City Council’s area, Blue Mountains City Council observed that areas within the Blue Mountains would be most affected, due to truck movements from Sydney through Bells Line of Road and the Great Western Highway.
A request has been made to Lithgow City Council to extend the deadline for submissions until March 4 to allow for more submissions.
