Save Noosa Hinterland - Nick Cooke

4:08 Nick Cook: My name is Nick Cook, and I'm the Vice President of Saviors England. We're a community conference. We're an organisation that was formed in 2020 to advocate for and represent the community in regards to the impacts, the significant impacts of the community quarry and the heavy haulage that comes through our communities. We need to think of a way to get us to rehab here.

4:30 Councillor Wegener: He needs a new microphone. I hope he gets a new microphone.

4:35 Nick Cook: All right. I'll try and yell. How about...

4:37 Speaker 1: Turn the camera around. That's better. All right. Let's start again.

4:49 Nick Cook: Okay. Good evening.

4:52 My name is Nick Cook, and I'm the Vice President of Saviors England. We're a community non-profit organisation that was co-operated in 2020 to advocate for and represent the community in regards to the Kin Kin Quarry and the heavy haulage that comes through our town. Tonight, I'm here to outline some issues relating to the quarry operations, and if you have any technical knowledge, and the impacts, as well as bring to the attention of some issues to Council, and some tangible solutions that can be impacted immediately. Essentially, this is a call for action across the board, but also a call for advocacy at other levels of government. I think it's the perfect time to make this invitation because we have a new Council, a new Mayor, and I'd like to make sure that everyone knows what we're doing in this space, and what we would like Council to do in this space. So let's start with a quick outline of the quarry. It was approved in 1987, which many may know, but it doesn't all go back to that approval date. There's been several amendments to the approval of the QMP since that time, some of which we won't review. Corpus Resources took over this quarry in 2020, and since that date, we've had a significant increase in operations and impacts to our towns. The operations are six days a week, six till six, Monday to Friday, and Saturdays seven till five.

6:08 Also, they can blast from nine till three, as per the QMP quarry management plan, with no limits on blasting. We see up to 288 quarry truck movements a day at capacity throughout towns, and there has been days where we haven't reached this capacity already, and with the expansion currently proposed, this is something we're going to get into the rules quite quickly.

6:31 This quarry is located 22 kilometres away from the highway, unlike other quarries that are located fairly close. If you look a bit more much, you'll see that they're mostly within one to five kms. This one is 22 kms over a mountain range and through multiple towns.

6:49 As I said, there's 288 quarry truck movements a day, and it's based five minutes up from the quarry. So that number doesn't include trucks traveling to the quarry. So at capacity, we can actually have a quarry truck every few minutes. That's trucks going to and from, and we all know, a lot of, most of us are from around here. We've experienced this. And I just wanted to say that this impacts more than just Kin Kin, which you'll often see from media releases. It's actually mostly people like Kin Kin, Pomona, Cr Anne, Peregian, Cooroy, Darragh, Lorraine, Poyne. Yes. The improved haulage route is actually from Chefsons Lane, Kin Kin, down Pomona Kin Kin Road, all the way to Bruce Highway. In fact, it goes right past this hall that we're standing in. It impacts our Kinders, our schools, our school buses, our skateparks, our parks, our walking trails, our Noosa trails. In fact, seven of the eight Noosa trails at some point traverse the haulage route. It also impacts a lot of businesses on the haulage route, including parents down.

7:50 So it's really important for us to know that we are protecting our koi management plan. The Koi Management Plan is a document, a very long document, that regulates the use of the koi. Unfortunately, in the last few years, Council have made the decision not to issue infringements of the Koi Management Plan during Council's court case against the operator. This is something that we want to see reversed immediately because the Koi Management Plan is the only document really at Council's disposal to protect us, and to protect our health,

8:20 A lot of the burden has been left on the community to do that and that's something we want to see change. We also want to see loopholes in the QMP amended and there's many of them. In fact there was a change in 2016 which was actually passed by council resolution that diluted the efficacy of the quarry management plan by putting it in a clause that says that the operator should operate generally in accordance with the QMP. And so we need to tighten those things up so that council can adequately protect the community. There's a whole bunch of things that count over the quarry grants and by-by including not riding trucks before the improved operating hours which most of us know is happening quite regularly. Trucks are coming through here at 5.30 in the morning and they queue up on Chepstons Lane. Another one that they should be doing is they should maintain 300 metres distance on Chepstons Lane. They should maintain a 60 metre distance on the open roads. There's a whole bunch of QMP stipulations. Stockpile heights, dust, dust mitigation. These are the levers council can pull to regulate this quarry. And in the beginning we were told the strategy to deal with this quarry, or one of them, was to make it unviable. And the only way to make it unviable is to enforce the QMP and issue infringements.

9:39 So as I said council made the decision not to issue infringements during the court case. So essentially for the last few years there's been no infringements issued. With the exception recently of an approved structure that we raised to council. So we're continually pushed back on this decision and we've even tried to seek a statement of reasons under the Judicial Review Act to seek the specifics of this decision and the material fact on which the decision was based. Because essentially the reasoning was we don't want to better the discretion of the judge who is unbiased. We've also received legal advice that we believe that this is not an appropriate action. And that it would not compromise the council's court case. Unfortunately to my request for a statement of reasons I've received the substandard response saying that my decision that I quoted, that is not to enforce the QMP during the court case, didn't exist. Despite the fact that I have statements from council confirming this from staff. That I have no standing, I'm not in a group party and you won't be dealing with me anymore. This is a problem and it's why I'm raising it now. So that this new council can address it and move forward from it. Because we can't keep having blockades that prevent us from being able to advocate and protect our community. So as I said approximately a year later, council did end up enforcing a breach of the QMP.

10:58 An unapproved structure which is currently in court. So obviously the legal advice has been thrown out. The monitoring of the quarry. We would like staff or a dedicated staff member to have to regulate the quarry and monitor the quarry. So the burden isn't on us to be attending every blast. To be capturing the breaches of the QMP through town. A lot of the evidence that was submitted to the court on behalf of the council is actually from residents, affidavits as well. And I think that what needs to happen is take the burden off us and ensure that someone is there just like you've got with SGA's and regulate this one business because of the blockades. I wanted to move on to out of this role, Newson Council can take particularly in regards to Pomona Kin Kin Road and the deficiencies that have just come out of Pomona Kin Kin Road road review. It's actually quite damning. Of the 95 kerbs on Pomona Kin Kin Road, 35 are insufficient to accommodate the length of the truck. So we're talking 19 metres plus. Many councils may not know about this. In fact, the community might know about this. It should actually be front page news on every news article. So what do they mean by they can't stay in their own lane? TMR say that it means that there are no clearance envelopes to maintain. The 19 metres semi-trailers cannot negotiate the movement without physically running off the stilt pavement, running into oncoming lanes, or coming in from one of the benefits objects such as the kerb clobber or sign.

12:23 So we need council to advocate to the state government to use their power list under section 46 of the Transport Infrastructure Act to limit truck movements by length because of these dangers.

12:40 This is not something council can do, but it's an advocacy role we can take. Also, what something is in council's remit is national heavy vehicle regulated guidelines issuing permits. This is something we brought up with council before we brought up our response. Basically, local roads require a permit issued by council in collaboration with the road manager in collaboration with the national heavy vehicle regulated guidelines. The national heavy vehicle regulated law requires road managers and road authorities to have regard to these guidelines and we believe they have no regard because they wouldn't be given out consistently on local roads with impacts. Some of the risks that are identified in the criteria are damage to the road infrastructure, which we obviously have, adverse impacts on the community arising from noise, emissions, traffic congestion and other matters, poses a significant risk to public safety. We take all of the criteria that the local permits are continually issued. So, some of the local roads are Sheppartons Lane, so if you could limit trucks on that road and then limit them across the rest of the haulage route. Also, some road in Pomona, which have a lot of members which are regularly impacted on the roads, also the road the school's on, and Pioneer Road. Some of the limits that you can pull, you can impose conditions, restrict permit duration.

13:57 I believe it's about 12 months at the moment. You can restrict the frequency of permit trips and you can also flat out put a mass restriction on the road, which is something we've been calling for for some time.

14:13 Consider alternate routes. If you cannot mitigate these risks, you can take them off the roads and ultimately evaluate the feasibility and basically the road manager and council can decide not to give consent to these permits at all, which is probably where this needs to go. Now, this is very important, especially considering the plans for the quarry to expand and the impact it's going to have on the community. There's currently an EPDCA referral for approximately 9.3 bike hectares of matter clearing of matters of national environmental significance. This is EPPs listed protected habitat. Habitat listed as critical to the survival of the koala. Now, this expansion was envisioned in the original and written by council, so they've allowed, they've approved this. However, I won't go into the QMP in detail, and I think that there could be some legal levers that council could pull to re-evaluate whether this construction can go ahead. The QMP says that the quarry management plan has generally reflected the original 1991 plan where appropriate. However, the 1991 plan was schematic. It did not address how to access the resources and was based on a broader context. That's directly from the QMP. It then goes on to say that activities carried out within this area will be subject to statutory processes for change to approvals, having regard to the extent of the change proposed. And it then goes on and on the map, which shows where they want to extract from.

15:30 It says this area is subject to additional assessment and change allocation. So, if it is required, essentially this could be huge. This could open up the approval, and it could potentially shut down the quarry altogether.

15:46 So, so far, the council have, after we've raised, we've found out about this clearing, council took an advocacy role and wrote to the Federal Environment Assembly, which we absolutely love them, but we believe there could be more that could be done to actually stop the expansion altogether.

16:04 And as I said, the expansion, just to show, 2021, 380,000 tonne extraction. 2022, 433,000 tonnes. And 2023, we're at 620,000 tonnes. In other words, over one million tonnes a year. So, we're very close to capacity. And once we are at capacity, we will, like I said, have a drug every few minutes. Some of the other things the council can take is review the key resource area designation of the logging question, which may come up for review in the state government. That would potentially remove the industry, the key, you know, resource industry and what allows it to be mined. State road, limits on state roads, as I said, section 46. Advocacy to the state for crossings and traffic calming measures on TMR roads in the hinterland. This road,

16:54 so we can implement it immediately. Advocacy to DES to regulate the dust, the poor abrasion on site and the environmental impacts. In fact, this clearing may also require some state government approval. So, council can step in and make sure that that actually gets to the state government. That would be good. Advocacy to Southeast Queensland border because the Lake Macdonald Dam upgrade is going ahead and is, there is the potential that all resources could get this contract and we could face increased borrower operations for our town for the next four to five years for this one project. This is where I think council need to advocate on behalf of the community and set this out this Queensland border. You need to not allow this. Look at the deficiencies of Pomona Kin Kin Road. Look at the impact it's already having on the community

17:50 Several key stakeholders started, including us, we were the main stakeholder, we had over 650 members we were representing, we were urgently called for those roundtables to reconvene under a new man, Frank Wilkie, and we asked for the roundtables to be in terms of reference, and a reference group set up to actually action the concerns that we raised in these roundtables, because all too often, we were bringing these concerns to the roundtable, and nothing happened. So, let's tighten that process and bring all the players to the table so that we can have some genuine and tangible outcomes. So, in conclusion, we hope council take on this message and immediately work to mitigate the impacts of the Kin Kin Quarry beyond the current court case. Thank you.