Residents help to decide fate of suburbs

In regard to the article re residents help to decide fate of suburbs. I thought developers and their consultants did that.
 
However Helensburgh would have to be historic. It has Australia's oldest mine.
 
Not only that, natural environment would apply as well. The Nationally Heritage Listed Royal National Park and Garrawarra State Conservation Areas surround the area along with the Illawarra Escarpment State Conservation Area. This is also a wildlife corridor between the three areas. Who would want to ruin this area? Well, about 115 people do with that number of proposals before Council in the review of 7d Hacking River Catchment  from this one zoning to 8 different zonings under the new LEP 2009 which is supposed to replace multiple zonings into one. So go figure...
 
As a further point of interest, the 7d was suppose to be E2 – Environmental Conservation but a howl of protest from land speculators said that they wouldn’t be able to replace a legal dwelling if it burnt down in a bushfire. So Council decided 7d would be E3 - Environmental Living which opens up the land for dwellings.
 
However under the Environmental Protection Act, Division 10 - Existing Uses, it wouldn’t matter what zoning was there, they would be able to replace their legal dwelling if it burnt down.
 
So why wasn’t this taken into account by Council to keep E2.

Funny about that.
 

Alan Bond

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