Page 1697 - Week 06 - Thursday, 20 May 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Wood: Ms Szuty, what was the title of that? I missed it.
MS SZUTY: The final environmental impact statement. The feeling expressed to me is that members of the community feel that, after stating what they feel are valid concerns, the process does not allow for their concerns to be answered. They subsequently feel that those concerns have been ignored.
The first question of many generated by this document was, "What is an environmental impact statement?". The Land (Planning and Environment) Act 1991 and its regulations set out those things that must be addressed by an environmental impact statement. But the emphasis and focus is on how we get around the environment, not as I would expect many people would argue that it should be, and that is to determine whether a proposal is a threat to the environment. I appreciate the effort that it took to bring together five Acts relating to land, environment and planning into one Act, but nowhere could I find one single sentence that provided protection for the environment in this process. Nowhere did it say, "If the impact is too great, the decision whether or not to develop will err on the side of the environment".
Even the final environmental impact statement in its conclusion pays scant regard to the very title of its task, saying that the proposal should be assessed against three criteria: First, does it meet the stated objectives, in this case providing cheap land for housing? Secondly, is the proposal justified as the most prudent way of meeting those objectives? All that was considered was other greenfields sites. Options were locations, not approaches. Thirdly, will unacceptable environmental impacts be a consequence of the chosen proposal; not, at what level of environmental impact will we pull the plug or abandon the proposal? As I said earlier, this environmental impact statement and the Act do not appear to have concern for the environment as their core rationale. Possibly the statements should be renamed "enabling environmental statements".
Another problem I found with the final environmental impact statement for West Belconnen was the quality and content of maps provided. The maps used by the final environmental impact statement to locate facilities and development appear to be slightly different from those provided by the National Capital Planning Authority in its amendment to the National Capital Plan. There is no detailed map of the existing facilities, just one map of the equestrian facilities. There is no map of existing water, sewerage, electricity, telephone or gas lines, and no location of the old sewage treatment ponds, Parkwood Eggs or the tip.
While these things are all discussed in the environmental impact statement as having a possible impact on the proposed development or, to adopt the language of the legislation, the defined decision, it would appear important, in my view, to primarily locate these things on a map, with reference to the areas to be developed. The draft environmental impact statement attempted to do this with a series of maps that identified by number various sites of environmental, historical and archaeological significance. While this was of some assistance, the maps were still of poor quality, being topographical maps complete with contours. The proliferation of lines made them difficult to read, although I concede that they were somewhat better in some regards than the final environmental impact statement maps.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .