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Western Sydney's bushland lost to development |
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Thursday, 03 November 2005 |
The residents of the 12,000 new and 300,000 previously slated homes in
the western Sydney growth centres announced today by Planning Minister
Frank Sartor will be living in a pollution sink hole with insufficient
green space, the states peak environment group said today.
"The negative impacts of Minister Sartor's decision to abandon
sufficient protection for green zones in western Sydney will be felt
for generations," Director of the Nature Conservation Council NSW, Cate
Faehrmann said today. Once these parks and bushland are gone, they are
gone forever.
"The government has bungled the green zoning process from the start.
"The department failed to match satellite mapping with the reality on
ground, and based initial decisions on green zones on faulty data.
Areas of high conservation value were left out of the initial plans,
while low conservation value areas were to be protected.
"But
instead of altering the plans to save the high conservation value
areas, Minister Sartor has dumped it in the too-hard basket and
scrapped the lot.
"This decision means very little bushland and green space will be saved apart from existing parklands and flood prone areas.
"The state government has not even had discussion with the federal
government about the green zones, despite much of the highest
conservation value land being owned by the commonwealth government.
"A pathetic $315 million of the anticipated $7.8 billion dollars in developer levies will be spent on securing green space.
"Minister Sartor has left individual councils to decide on green spaces
within future developments. Leaving the difficult decisions to local
councils will lead to ad hoc decisions and green corridors that don't
match up across council boundaries.
"The Nature Conservation
Council calls on Minister Sartor to protect western Sydney for future
generations by saving its remaining bushland and parkland," Ms
Faehrmann said.
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