16 Sep The Battle for Gore Creek is underway

Greenwich residents and key community figures have prepared strong arguments and considerable protest plans to fight the Council’s intended plans for Bob Campbell Oval and Gore Creek Reserve.

In a strongly argued and researched letter to the Council Officer responsible, Martin Terescenko, and copied to the three East Ward Councillors and the General Manager, Craig Wrightson, it was pointed out:

• In the Lane Cove Council’s own Local Environment Plan (LEP) Gore Creek Reserve is named as a Heritage item. According to the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment LEPs exist to guide planning decisions for local government areas.

LEPs do this through zoning and development controls, which provide a framework for the way land can be used. LEPs are the main planning tool to ‘shape the future’ of communities and also ensure local development is done appropriately

• As importantly, all the BCO land is zoned as ‘Riparian land’ under Council’s own Riparian map attached to its LEP.

Riparian lands are the transition zone between the land and the watercourse that is important for maintaining or improving the shape, stability and ecological functions of a watercourse.

Riparian land provides critical habitat for native plants and animals, including threatened species. The vegetation along streams provides a connection for native plants and animals to move between patches of remnant vegetation in the landscape.

Victorian and NSW water authorities further explain how trees on Riparian land provide a supply of organic matter to waterways, providing food and habitat for fish and other aquatic animals. Shade from riparian vegetation also helps regulate water temperature, which can be important to fish and helps reduce the likelihood of algal blooms.

The plants on Riparian land play an instrumental role in protecting water quality by filtering nutrients and sediment out of run-off entering waterways.

The Greenwich Community asks this question of Council: if all of the Gore Creek Reserve/Bob Campbell Creek area is zoned as Riparian land then how is a synthetic soccer pitch at all consistent with the much published and encouraged need to preserve riparian land?

• To emphasise the strength of their case the resident letter to Council also directs attention to the straightforward fact that the entire site is not the Council’s; it’s actually Crown Land that has not been devolved to Council – excluding a small ‘land locked’ triangle which is clearly owned by Council.

The letter says because this precious harbourside location is Crown Land the provisions of the Crown Lands Act of 2016 and the Crown Land Management Regulation of 2018 (Sect 14) make it likely  the Minister’s consent is necessary before undertaking a Development Application for the intended synthetic grass overhaul of Gore Creek Reserve.

From a NSW government environmental heritage perspective a report by Local Land Services titled Sydney Harbour Water Quality Improvement Plan — with the slogan ‘Healthy Catchments Healthy Harbour’ —provides a timely reminder that the surrounding Lane Cove bushland has a greatly diverse range of flora and fauna with around 625 species of indigenous plants in a number of vegetation types such as wet and dry schlerophyll forest and heath land with mangroves and tidal flats in the lower estuary.

The Lane Cove Bushland Park adjoining Gore Creek Reserve is of course home to an endangered species of fungus, Hygrocybe lanecovensis that is not found anywhere else, anywhere!

There will be more online next month about this natural wonderland of fungus and fauna in our midst. This whole catchment area and precious running stream that keeps our much loved local wildlife and bushland alive is further threatened by the bizarre plans for a major sports precinct on the bushland curtilage of Lane Cove Golf Club up the road.