Bega Mayor bulldozes over Zombie DA petition

A paper petition about Zombie DAs was tabled at the Bega Valley Shire Council meeting today - you can watch the recording of the meeting yourself once the archive is updated, with discussion of the petition in the first few minutes.

Unfortunately, the Mayor interrupted the reading of this petition from local residents and bulldozed over this issue. Meanwhile, well over half an hour of time was later spent debating which Councillors should go to the Local Government NSW Annual Conference. Again in comparison, the discussion around Bega Valley Shire Flying Fox Camp Management Plan lasted a brief 6 minutes.

With the release of the State of the Environment Report yesterday it's clear that Local Councils need to take these environmental issues more seriously.

According to the Council's Minutes they currently have 45 Subdivision Applications outstanding. We wonder how many of these are Zombie DAs or will seriously impact critical habitats and endangered species.

At the end of the meeting there was a brief discussion where the Council was asked again to list how many Zombie DAs they currently have, and this broke down to the point they exclaimed they did not really know what a Zombie DA actually is.

From our perspective it's clear that a Zombie DA is any Development or Subdivision Application that would NOT be allowed to proceed under the current Biodiversity & Conservation or Environmental Planning & Assessment Laws, but IS allowed to proceed because of it's age, or loopholes such as "trivial initial work had commenced".

We hope the Bega Valley Shire Council really do take time to respond to their concerned local residents and ratepayers in a considered and substantive way.

Please let this Council know how important you think this issue is. You can reach them through Facebook, Instagram, Email or call them on (02) 6499 2222.