Media release
Land and Environment Court refuses appeal for worker’s camp on Skellatar Stock Route
Commissioner Tim Moore of the Land & Environment Court has delivered his decision on the appeal against Muswellbrook Shire Council’s refusal of a development application last year for a proposed mine construction worker’s camp on the Skellatar Stock Route in Muswellbrook. The Commissioner refused the development application on basis that it did not need to be located close to town as referred to in the land zone objectives under Council’s Local Environmental Plan 1985. The appeal hearing was conducted by the Commissioner in Muswellbrook in late June 2009, and in Sydney in late July.
The development would have involved the erection of 14 buildings and associated car parking on the portion of the site fronting Skellatar Stock Route. These were to be predominantly one and two-storey buildings containing rooms to provide accommodation for around 400 construction workers who, as earlier noted, will construct infrastructure at coal mines in the Muswellbrook local government area or elsewhere in the upper Hunter Valley.
In considering the appeal, the Commissioner determined that the development was permissible in the land zoning under the relevant town planning controls, and that traffic, noise and lighting impacts associated with the proposed development were not significant enough to warrant refusal of the development under the applicable planning controls. He also concluded that odour impacts from the adjoining sewage treatment plant were also of a nature that could not be used to justify refusal of the development.
This page last updated 18 November, 2009 11:02 AM
