The Rockhampton Regional Council on 9 October granted “full council” approval for a quarry at Kabra, Bouldercombe, after the application was lodged on 19 June.
Rockhampton Mayor Margaret Strelow told Quarry the approval, with conditions, was for the extraction of 20,000 tonnes per annum of decomposed granite at the site, south of Rockhampton.
“What they’re looking at is an operation over about four hectares and the type of equipment we’d be seeing is diggers, excavators and front end loaders as well as a crushing and screening plant,” Mayor Strelow said.
The hours of operation have been restricted from 6am to 6pm from Monday to Saturday, with no work on Sundays and public holidays. Other conditions include a maximum of two round trips for trucks.
Council has also precluded the applicant John McEvoy from using oils and chemicals for the treatment of unsealed surfaces and imposed restrictions on cleaning plant, equipment and vehicles to prevent contamination of waterways.
Council also resolved not to issue an Infrastructure Charges Notice on this development application.
Strelow struck an encouraging note when she told PressReader that “it was positive to see another business wanting to open up”.
Court appeal
In a related matter, Rockhampton Regional Council was a respondent in an appeal made by Perivall, an objector to a development application by Vynque (co-respondent) in the Planning and Environment Court in Brisbane.
A spokesperson said they’d lodged a preliminary point in relation to the DA not being properly made and the court found the DA was properly made and dismissed it.
“There is no proper foundation to the allegations relied on by the appellant to found the relief it seeks. The appellant's request is denied,” the court judgement reads.
“The nature of the application is well summarised in the Engineering & Planning Commentary Report … The extent of the operational area is readily ascertainable from the application read as a whole.”
In a separate case about the same development application, Vynque is appealing conditions placed by the Queensland Department of Infrastructure and Local Government and Planning.
The appeal relates to Vynque’s Peak Hill Quarry, which has operated for about 50 years.
After lodging an application in 2015 to expand the operation to an area of 30.75ha from 20.6ha, the application was approved in August 2017 by council. A month later, a number of conditions were imposed by the infrastructure and planning department.
The applicant argues there is no planning purpose that requires extraction to be restricted to 200,000 tonnes a year, as one condition requires. The average volume currently extracted at Peak Hill Quarry is 240,000 tpa.
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