Mood: irritated
Topic: ecology
[under construction]
These images are taken from a big sand mining operation 45km north of Sydney at Maroota corner of Wiseman's Ferry Rd and Old Northern Rd on a tourist drive there, 12th Jan 2008. There is no attribution of the photographs.
It's next to a private residence, 1 km from the local school, across the road from an orchard and about to destroy a lookout on a Trigonometrical Reserve on public land, and officially endangered
"Maroota Sands Swamp Forest ... at risk from hydrological changes from nearby extractive industries": NSW Scientific Committee Final Determination gazettal 17/10/97.
The saga of broken legal obligations under consent conditions agreed (no costs order) adopted by the Land & Environment Court in 1998 are very disturbing, not least the blatant failure to rehabilitate according to a timetable and schedule over the last 7 years.
Now the company PF Formations effectively wants to further avoid these land rehabilitation legal obligations (in the "schedule marked A" as referred to below) with a huge water hungry "State significant" expansion of their sand mine at Maroota which will effectively make the rehab of the public's Trig Reserve redundant. Because the lookout will no longer exist except as a hole in the ground!