The council’s general manager Brad Cam said the community and council had been lobbying for more than 12 months to prevent the land clearing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“[It’s] exactly what I thought was going to happen, so very disappointed, very frustrated that we weren’t listened to, or it was certainly dismissed as not a critical event,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It could have been avoided and it hasn’t because it’s just poor planning.”<\/p>\n
Dozens of native hatchlings, including kookaburras, rosellas and galahs were displaced after hollow trees were removed by ACEREZ.\u00a0 (Supplied: Sharon Martin)<\/p>\n
The removal of native and hollow-bearing trees was part of work done for the NSW government agency EnergyCo, which is heading up the multi-billion-dollar Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone (REZ).\u00a0<\/p>\n
EnergyCo drew up the planning and biodiversity assessments, approved in 2024, and then appointed ACEREZ as the contractor for the REZ transmission network.<\/p>\n
The Mid-Western Regional Council began negotiating with both groups in September 2024, after it became aware of plans to widen the Merotherie Road by removing centuries-old natives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The roadworks were designed to allow for equipment and increased traffic to an energy hub, and workforce accommodation for around 1,200 people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Mid-Western Regional Council’s general manager Brad Cam fought for an alternative to the tree destruction on Merotherie Road.\u00a0 (Supplied: Regional Development Australia)<\/p>\n
“We have really been spending an enormous amount of time with EnergyCo and ACEREZ to avoid this situation,” Mr Cam said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“There were several meetings both on site as well as in our council buildings to discuss alternatives, but unfortunately they just fell on deaf ears.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
One suggestion was to build a new road parallel to the existing one, on already cleared land owned by EnergyCo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Can said that would have allowed for the now-cleared vegetation to be turned into a wildlife corridor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Merotherie Road, north of Gulgong, before and after tree removal.\u00a0 (Supplied: Emma Bowman)<\/p>\n
“In the end a poor decision was made because no one would make a decision in a timely manner,” he said.<\/p>\n
EnergyCo told the ABC that the meetings were “part of our broader process with regional stakeholders to ensure transparency and collaboration” and where possible it incorporated feedback.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Government trumped council<\/p>\n
An ACEREZ spokesperson said it had been working closely with the Mid Western Regional Council on the road design.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It said the upgrade was identified in the project’s Environmental Impact Statement that was submitted by EnergyCo in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The company said vegetation was removed to “comply with Austroad standards and the local road authority’s codes”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the council was informed that 670 trees would be cleared, it refused to sign a Section-138 Certificate giving consent for the works on the council-owned road.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We certainly didn’t approve the works to be done, but because it’s a state-significant critical infrastructure project our authority can be removed and the work continued without our approval,” Mr Cam said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We do matter, we do count and our thoughts and our concerns need to be taken into consideration, not just full-steam ahead on a project that’s for the national good or the NSW good,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Flawed offsets system<\/p>\n
Sue Higginson says an independent police integrity commission is needed. (ABC News: Berge Breiland)<\/p>\n
NSW Greens MP and environment spokeswoman Sue Higginson said it was an example of a failing planning system that allowed the developer and government to “bulldoze past environmental protections”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“To destroy nature in the name of protecting nature doesn’t square,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We seem to have a way of driving the planning system that just approves environmental destruction, where we seem to choose the quickest, or cheapest, or easiest way to do development.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
EnergyCo is set to spend $140 million on biodiversity offsets, after entering into a ‘Biodiversity Conservation Investment Strategy’ with the government for the REZ.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the clearing works ACEREZ collected seeds to be replanted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Ms Higginson said the “defective biodiversity offsets system is being used as a battering ram to push all kinds of development through the planning system at nature’s expense”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I just don’t think communities are going to cop this level of biodiversity destruction across the landscape justified by the renewable energy rollout,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NSW government is being accused of wilfully ignoring warnings about the destruction of hundreds of native trees…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,182999,6828,182998,75,15857,183001,183000,63258,63257,128,9525],"class_list":["post-326050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-central-west-orana-renewable-energy-zone","tag-energy-transition","tag-energyco","tag-environment","tag-environmental-policy","tag-native-birds","tag-native-trees","tag-renewable-energy-zone","tag-rez","tag-science","tag-threatened-species"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}