2018-04-10 Planning & Environment Committee Agenda

PLANNING & ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                         10 APRIL 2018


Biodiversity
The Biodiversity Overlay Code of the Noosa Plan seeks to protect Koala habitat areas. The site
contains primary and secondary koala habitat trees (Blue gums and Paperbark respectively) and
proposal will involve clearing primary and secondary koala habitat trees to facilitate the
development. The use of the site for residential development is highly likely to diminish the koala
habitat values of the site and does not improve the habitat values. Where habitat values are
retained on the site, the increase intensity of the use of the site has the potential to impact on the
koala habitat values of the site and the adjacent National Park.
The provision of offset plantings to compensate for the loss of koala habitat has the potential to
increase the bushfire hazard risk to the proposed house site areas and does not provide a
suitable gain in overall area for koala habitat.
Wetlands
Wetlands have been identified as occurring in the south west corner of the site and contained
habitat for threatened frog species and crayfish. The remnant paperbark wetland in this area is
sensitive to changes in hydrology, surface run off, nutrient inputs, light penetration and changes
to water chemistry. Increasing the uses in the buffer adjacent to the wetland is highly likely to
negatively impact on the habitat values of the wetland and the species assemblages it supports
due to “edge effects such as nutrient inputs, light penetration, domestic animals, disturbance and
weed incursion.
Land Use & Works Provisions
The application has been assessed against the applicable codes. The pertinent issues arising out
of the assessment against the codes are discussed below:
Earthworks Code
In order to overcome the flood hazard over the site, the application proposes to introduce fill to
create house pads above the defined flood level.
Specific Outcome SO2 of the Earthworks Code seeks to ensure any change to the level of land
does not have an adverse flooding impact on the flooding and drainage characteristics off-site.
The matter was raised to the applicant during the Information Request period. The applicant
provided an assessment of the potential impact relating to imported fill and submits the following:
   “Approximately 1749m3 of fill is required between the existing levels and the defined flood
   level to establish the house pad areas. The impacts on the surrounding flood levels as a
   result of this fill is partially offset by the cut within the site below the defined flood level of
   approx. 500m3, leaving a total of 1249m3 of fill within the floodplain that has not been offset.
   This volume displaces flood waters in this area which has the potential to raise flood levels
   however as this volume is applied over the local flood plain area the impacts are virtually
   insignificant. Conservatively the area of the surrounding floodplain could be defined as the
   area upstream of the Eenie Creek Road bridge over Weyba Creek. Arguably this could
   include the whole of Lake Weyba, however for this exercise this has been excluded.
   The attached plan shows that the floodplain in this area is over 390 Hectares. Once the
   displaced volume is applied over this area the increase in flood level that results is less
   than 0.32mm.”




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