Byron Shire Council’s Draft Rural Land Use Strategy is really ill conceived aimed at destroying our rural areas at the expense of the amenity and safety of people who live there.
The strategy targets 320 possible new houses in a 2km radius of Main Arm, a small hamlet of 16 houses 10km from Mullumbimby. Plus, another 420 for the Pocket and Middle Pocket areas.
This is ridiculous and a result of very poor planning. It will ruin our rural landscape and amenity by imposing a whole series of unwanted, unneeded suburban subdivisions all over our beautiful hills and valleys.
Council seems so desperate to maximise the potential number of houses, they really loosened the srategy’s selection criteria allowing subdivisions to be built here and the rest of the shire on land with very steep slopes up to 32 per cent, with high bushfire risk, that’s flood liable and even in wildlife corridors, scenic escarpment zones, and on prime agricultural lands—all prohibited in the previous strategy.
Our areas are surrounded by forests with a high bushfire risk, and are periodically isolated from towns during even minor flooding events when the sub-standard roads and causeways become impassable sometimes for a few days at a time.
Purposely locating so many new residents here makes no sense and is very risky.
This type of development belongs closer to towns in areas on flatter land with few constraints and good roads.
Please write a submission by 20 May to council opposing this stupid strategy so we can save our beautiful rural areas here and the rest of the Shire from clearly inappropriate development.
Guy Fisher, Main Arm
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