LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
THE residents of Toongabbie are outraged at the lack of due diligence with a planning permit application for an 800,000 broiler farm on the border of Wellington Shire land and the Latrobe City.
Wellington Shire Council has, in effect, destined the neighbours of the broiler farm and surrounding community to a flawed and inadequate process.
There are concerns over the lack of an odour environmental risk assessment, proper road safety scoping report and a water management plan, to name a few.
This shows a total disregard by Wellington Shire Council to our community, particularly in regards to its strategic plan framework which states “Wellington has encouraged growth in appropriate locations supported by infrastructure that meet the needs of the community whilst protecting and enhancing the amenity of each unique geographical location”.
An 800,000 broiler farm in the position that it is would be in contradiction to this statement.
To add insult is Wellington council’s comment, “the proposal will have a positive social and economic effect on the local community through the creation of employment opportunities and economic activity within the local area”.
Nowhere in the planning permit application does it support this erroneous assumption.
The application states that it needs a four-car car park and says it will employ, quote, “one permanent staff member … an additional staff member attending the site at delivery and pick up times and casual staff may be employed during pick up cleanout and restock stage every eight to nine weeks”.
Hardly a great increased employment opportunity for the Toongabbie township.
And for those neighbours part of the buffer zones and for all those homes affected along the roadside from Toongabbie, through Glengarry to Traralgon who will have to put up with all the extra truck traffic and noise, what’s socially positive about that?
Not to mention the drop in valuation in house prices.
This is intensive chicken farming, and if Wellington council approves this planning application as it stands, a great injustice would be served on the community of Toongabbie.
