Fair go on roal road haulage bid.
With photo and caption Plea: The coal terminal. Truck plans bring a call for transparency.
The Port Kembla Coal Terminal Major Proposal application currently before the NSW Department of Planning, calling as it does for additional coal haulage on the Mt. Ousley Road, is seriously flawed.
Much more consultation with the community by both PKCT and the Department of Planning is needed. Submissions were invited for just a month, which happened to include the October school holidays and the required Submissions Report greatly played down community concerns.
In addition, this report was quietly placed on a website at the start of the Christmas holiday period. Many people who wrote submissions have not been informed that this report had been released.
When I visited the NSW Dept. of Planning Wollongong office, there was no printed copy of this Report. The process lacks transparency.
Of consultation, PKCT claims that 2400 copies of a community newsletter were distributed in April 2008. I, for one, have not seen this newsletter and I live very close to the corridor.
It is misleading to say that only residents living near the corridor will be affected by this major haulage of the projected 10 million tonnes per annum of coal.
The many people who live in Wollongong and work in or near Campbelltown or Sydney will be affected. So also will people who commute to Wollongong to work, and people travelling between the South Coast and parts of Sydney.
If the proposal is approved and proceeds, it will cause major upheaval on our roads and develop into a nightmare for road user.
The Wran Government in 1979 promised that road haulage of coal would not exceed two million tonnes per annum. When the present coal loader was opened in 1982, Wollongong people were asked to accept four million tonnes but by way of compensation were given a curfew of road haulage of coal to the loader. Now they are being asked to not only have "24/7" coal trucking with no curfew, but a huge increase in coal on road.
In order to get a more transparent assessment process a public enquiry must be held.
Irene Tognetti,
Keiraville
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