John Lazarus, Byron Bay
An update on proposed development of the Belongil Spit site, for the information particularly of those that were involved in the successful Club Med battle, and the subsequent community campaign, which drove down the same site’s Becton proposal to 140 tourist cabins with compensatory planting up on the golf course with Becton’s alleged one million trees.
The outgoing mayor’s last pro-development finger up at you, is that councillors (including his ‘bulldoze-the-bush’ Greens, and former Greens, councillors faction) have sent a request to the State Government to rezone the Belongil Spit’s former golf course area for a housing development. Councillors have asked the State Government to allow Byron Council to amend the LEP to allow houses on two hectare blocks (one house per block… to start with?) under an E4 Environmental Living Zone.
E4 Environmental Living zones are for land with special environmental or scenic values where residential development can be accommodated, but where development is to cede priority to preservation of the particular environmental qualities of the land. The proposed housing development is over the former golf course site, which is purely exotic grasslands.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
