Eastern Creek Business Hub

It is with further disappointment that Blacktown & District Environment Group Inc feels obliged to lodge a submission opposing another excising of part of the former OTC Site, Eastern Creek, for a development or infrastructure project.

Several years ago, when the Premier of NSW announced the plan for the Western Sydney Parklands and declared the parklands would be the "Lungs of Sydney" our group felt that something worthwhile was eventually being done to pull back on the full scale destruction of areas which earlier generations had assigned to be the "Green Belt" of Sydney but later generations were degrading.

With others in the City of Blacktown we looked upon the 300ha former OTC site being a substantial gain for conservation as part of the Western Sydney Parklands.

This was not to be. Indeed, so much has occurred in relation to excising parts of the former OTC site for a range of uses other than conservation that conservationists have lost all faith in the capacity of NSW Planners to have a gram of regard for the citizens of the City of Blacktown and their hope for retaining something toward viable populations of the flora and fauna of the area.

The ugly Landcom housing development occurring in the eastern portion of the site, the M7 Motorway carving a demonstrable separation of one area from another, the excavation of extended areas in the north-west portion of the site for sporting fields and now the proposed business hub between the M7 and Rooty Hill Rd South have been an assault to our sensitivities. There is now no regard for government as an institution. Conservationists/environmentalists/ecologists in Blacktown have been betrayed.

We are left now to comment specifically on the business hub and, after failing to obtain a decent outcome on this, we are left to await the next government assault on the former OTC site.

The site for the business hub is replete with hundreds of indigenous trees, some well over 100 years old and many with hollows providing potential habitat for possums, certain birds and microbats. The proposed development will remove a large number of these trees.

There are stands of vegetation satisfying threshold for TSC Act listed ecological communities but not all stands will be protected. One area, somewhat within the site and opposite the intersection of Rooty Hills Rd South and Cawarra St, is well supplied with Bursaria spinosa and Pultenaea Microphylla shrubs and high representation of native grasses but the area is proposed for a car park

Even areas of vegetation with high proportion of weed infestation have become habitat and foraging space for an ever diminishing population of Wrens and other small birds in Blacktown LGA. The argument within the proposal's documentation about degraded vegetation has apparently little assent from the small birds which will be displaced for a time or even lost for good.

The drainage lines on site afford potential habitat for frogs, eels and tortoises while also perhaps being traversed by lace monitor lizards. This writer, in recent years, has seen lace monitor lizards in the area of Eastern Creek and one only this year across the Great Western Highway from this site where a tomato farm has been mooted.

If, against our wishes, the development is to go ahead we urge that sensitive consideration be given to translocation of fauna wherever potential habitat e.g. water courses, are to be removed and that tree removal not be undertaken during breeding season for potential fauna inhabitants. Also, we ask that the utmost consideration be given to tree retention for landscaping purposes especially aged trees. Those aged trees serve as the most tangible link to the site's former natural, pastoral and agricultural past.

We would even ask that whatever steps are to be taken toward revegetating areas for a conservation zone, even a wetland, that these processes be accelerated to afford greater potential for available habitat for displaced fauna before clearing occurs elsewhere on the site for the development proposal.

So ends another appeal against the degradation of the natural heritage of City of Blacktown.

Wayne Olling
Secretary
BDEG

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,
I am certainly not objecting to the development proposal I believe it will add value to the area and ultimately the value of my home also.
I do however have a question around how traffic is to be managed on Rooty Hill Road South? I live in Doctor Lawson Place off St Agnes Avenue and to turn in and out (but right in particular) onto Rooty Hill Rd Sth during peak time of the day is a challenge now. I can only imagine once the proposed development is underway and construction has commenced traffic will be significantly worse. The same goes for once the structure is complete and the volume of traffic coming in and out of the hub increases. I see in the development proposal that there is a request to widen the Road down the south end of Rooty Hill Road St near the school as a turning lane, however I wanted to clarify how traffic flow in and out of the surrounding streets will be managed such as Minchinbury Street, St Agnes Avenue and in particular Church Street as I imagine this will become a main thoroughfare in and out. Is there any plan to put in place additional road safety such as traffic lights or round abouts?
Thank you for your time and I look forward to the response.
Regards,
Kendall Nicholas.

Please see the submission attached

Thank you

Shane