Green MP champions quarry campaign

Greens MP Lee Rhiannon and Lismore councillor Vanessa Ekins with concerned property owners and community members on land at Tuckurimba with Champions Quarry in the background.

Ms Rhiannon met with Lismore Greens councillor Vanessa Ekins and local campaigners at Tuckurimba where Ms Rhiannon was updated on the current situation.

Her visit comes a week after the Land and Environment Court adjourned the court case involving wrongly positioned bunds (used for noise and dust mitigation) until July.

Local residents told Ms Rhiannon that the court case had been adjourned until a later date because the court found that information submitted by the quarry’s surveyors was contradictory.

Ms Rhiannon was also advised of two other court cases instigated by the quarry owners which challenged Lismore City Council’s decision to refuse the development application for a major expansion to the quarry.

“The quarry owners will be taking their proposal to expand the quarry’s extraction limit to 200,000 tonnes to the court in Ballina in October,” Tucki resident Lois Wadsworth said. “They will also be taking the matter to the State Court in Sydney at a later date, and for that case, they have increased their expansion proposal to an ever bigger extraction amount of 250,000 tonnes.”

Friends of the Koala president Lorraine Vass told Ms Rhiannon that any quarry expansion would undoubtedly have a detrimental impact on the local koala population.

“There is less habitat for koalas than there once was and who knows what the impact of additional trucks on the roads will have on the fragile koala population here,” Ms Vass said.

Campaigners told Ms Rhiannon they were also concerned about the proposed buffer zones, dust pollution, impacts on the visual amenity and clearing issues.

Part of the quarry’s proposed expansion plans include building a sand washing plant and a series of dams which would trap 50,000m³ of water.

Garry Owers, an environmental scientist from Wetland Care Australia, said that if the quarry expanded there would be a significant impact on the Tuckean wetland system surrounding the quarry.

“While the Tuckean wetland is not a pristine swamp, we have been working to restore it for a number of years and we don’t need a developer to come along and degrade it further,” he said.

He said that any run-off from the quarry would feed into the wetland and that he was concerned the quarry owners had underestimated the future rainfall and evaporation rates.

“The quarry’s operations will produce water with a high concentration of acid and if the dams overflow, it would adversely affect the swamp.”

Mr Owers also said that four endangered ecological communities of threatened species had been found in the area and that he was concerned about who would be responsible for monitoring any of the quarry’s ongoing operations for compliance.

Ms Rhiannon said that she was aware there were not enough inspectors available to investigate complaints made to the Land and Environment Court and that she would be calling on the EPA to provide more officers.

“Champions Quarry’s application should have been knocked back from the start, considering its super size, proximity to local houses and farms, noise and air pollution risks, and impact on threatened species,” Ms Rhiannon said.

Ms Rhiannon said that she would bring the matter to the attention of parliament during its next sitting in two months time and would attempt to get as many MPs as possible to support her in the issue.

“Local campaigners and Lismore Council deserved to be congratulated for their energy and passion in fighting the expansion,” Ms Rhiannon said. “Under the current NSW Government, communities across NSW have had their concerns swept under the carpet.

“Labor is focused on centralising planning approvals and growing mining, regardless of its detrimental impacts on residents and the environment.”

Champions Quarry owner Jeff Champion told The Echo Ms Rhiannon would be leaving with “a very distorted view of the development”.

“She has only spoken to the opponents and never came to see us or inspected the site. She has probably not considered the transport savings and greenhouse gas savings in having a sandstone quarry in the region as opposed to importing material from the lower Gold Coast,” he said.