Residents of Creek Street, Hastings Point are calling on the community to turn up and show their support to reject the development of 40 Creek Street, Hastings Point on flood-prone land at a Land and Environment Court (L&EC) hearing at the site on Monday, June 23, from 10.30am.
They reject the development application (DA) for 11 residential lots due to the flood risks and environmental impacts of the proposed development.
Tweed Shire Council rejected the development application (DA) for 40 Creek Street (DA20/0386) based on flood risk and environmental encroachment in August 2023.
The site is zoned residential but ‘has significant environmental constraints as well as being flood-prone’ according to the staff report at the time, though Tweed Shire Council staff recommended approval of the DA at the time.
14,500 cubic metres of fill
Hastings Point Progress Association (HPPA) have highlighted that this land is flood-prone and that the DA states the site would need to be built up with 14,500 cubic metres of fill (2.2m), which they say will cause major flooding issues to the existing homes along Creek Street and into North Star Caravan Park.
Richard Gow who has owned the property that backs onto this lot for 40 years says that ‘the estuary [that ran through the site] was illegally dredged and filled to create this lot’.
‘The only solution to prevent flooding is to reopen the original estuary flow path.’
Rejecting the DA in 2023 Tweed Shire Mayor, Chris Cherry, said that while she had previously given ‘in principle support’ for the site to be developed it had been ‘conditional on this application not increasing its development footprint’.
‘Councillor Cherry said point six of the in-principle support stated that: “Any future development application that proposes to increase the number of lots, reduce the size of lots or vary any other developments controls to intensify yield or the development footprint or further impact on the buffer or environmental areas will not be looked on favourably by Council”.’
Cr Cherry then went on to detail a number of ways that the current DA went beyond the basis of the in-principle support pointing out that now most of the lots now push into that 75m environmental buffer zone and the lot size has increased from the original 800 metres square in the plan in 2019 to 1,470 square metres.
Flood risk major factor
Cr Cherry further explained that the impact of the 2022 floods had also demonstrated that the TSC needed to take significant care when approving housing in flood zones. ‘Property is this area is at-risk of being uninsurable according to the Insurance Council of Australia and the Climate Council lists us as the most at risk electorate in the country,’ Julie Boyd, Secretary of HPPA said.
‘This DA and amendments do nothing to address the key concerns of the community with regard to flooding and stormwater storage and egress.’
Numbers count
HPPA President, Gary Thorpe, says it carries a significant amount of weight with the commissioner of the L&EC to witness the number of concerned residents who turn up to reject this DA.
‘This is the tenth DA we have opposed on this site. The Hastings Point community is exhausted from 40 years of trying to protect their families, lives, and property from a development which will put those at extreme risk,’ said Mr Thorpe.
‘We have successfully fought nine DAs prior to this using local knowledge, the goodwill of experts and the hours, months, and years of coordinated argument, all financed on a shoestring by a passionately concerned community. There should be no construction on a floodplain.
Creek Street residents have been fighting this DA application proposed by Walter Elliot Holdings/Palm Lake Works, in its various forms, since 1984.
‘We are asking Hastings Point residents and their supporters to turn out in force on June 23 to again voice their opposition to a development application for 40 Creek Street.’
Developments in flood zones are not only subject to expensive insurance, they push the cost of everyone’s insurance up; said the head of Zurich insurance.
When is the insanity of greedy developers trying to make megabucks out of flood prone land going to end?
If this and other similar developments are allowed, they then become Council’s and ratepayers’ problems forever.
It’s a fragile estuary that needs to be returned to its natural state and left alone.
Accessible housing really isn’t being prioritised