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Celebrating 50 Years of Environmental Action
Celebrating 50 Years of Environmental Action
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Welcome
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7th October
2004 “The Parks and Playgrounds Movement have called on the Newcastle Councillors to draw public attention to the Compensatory Habitat Agreement still to be honoured by the Commonwealth Government and the RTA at Adamstown”. Doug Lithgow President of the Movement said today. “Failure to honour the agreement brings public authorities into disrepute and destroys public confidence in planning”, he said. In the year 2000 Council rezoned 5ha of Commonwealth land for residential use as part of an agreement between the Commonwealth, Newcastle Council, the RTA, and the National Parks Service to add 25ha of Commonwealth owned bushland lot 2 DP827809 to Glenrock Conservation Reserve at the nominal cost of $49,000. The RTA agreed to facilitate the agreement as compensatory habitat for the Charlestown bypass provided the Council rezoned the northern end of the former military land for residential use. The Commonwealth land subject to the agreement has been zoned open space since 1952 and the recently exhibited Newcastle 2000 LEP also showed the 25ha lot 2 in DP827809 as openspace. Housing is now being constructed on the rezoned openspace but the bushland has been subdivided for an expressway road not compensatory habitat as agreed. Lot 2 should have been transferred to the Parks Service as promised. Lot 2 has been wrongly subdivided twice. Once by the Commonwealth and once by the RTA. A Message from Doug: Dear good honest folks, Please help in having this matter corrected. · I expect some action from one or all of you. · Don’t allow this openspace public land to be destroyed. See Attachments 1.Exhibited Plan 2.Letter to Councillors. · Sure Lord Mayor Heys thought he was doing the right thing but Lord Mayor Tate was a party to the deal to obtain the 25ha as Compensatory Habitat. See hyperlink for the 1999 Press Release from Greg Heys http://www.ncc.nsw.gov.au/council/message/gregheys.cfm?CDID=44 · We are talking about an identifiable 25ha Lot or parcel of public land of high conservation quality. · The land also has WWI and WWII military heritage significance. · The description of the land is lot 2 DP827809 The land is public land and has been zoned openspace since 1952. Officers of the Commonwealth did wrong in not transferring the whole 25ha parcel of land to the NSW State Parks Service in the year 2000 when the Council rezoned the residential 5ha. That was the deal – See the Mayor’s resolution in Council when rezoning the land. This is not complicated it is a matter of honouring the agreements made in good faith in 1999. Do not allow this issue to be blurred with acquisition of land for road development. A Coastal Expressway with egress and entrance from Brunker Road must be the subject of a proper proposal and EIS. Furthermore if Commonwealth had been transferring land for road development then a Commercial Price would have been appropriate not the nominal $49.000 dollars. (Only $48,000 dollars was paid because the Heritage area was subdivided from the parcel before transfer to the RTA. To add insult to injury the RTA then dishonourably re-subdivided the land earlier this year. I do not intend to let these dishonourable acts go without comment. Your help is needed to bring the truth of what happened to the attention of the public and to have the agreements honoured. Please help, Doug Lithgow Freeman of the City of Newcastle ---------------------------------------------------------------- Back to Issues Index |
