By ALENA HIGGINS
A GROUP of local landholders fiercely opposed to the development of a large poultry farm near Pratten has called an urgent public meeting to seek clarification and transparency of council’s planning processes.
The forum, to be held on Monday night at the Criterion Hotel, is seen as a last ditch attempt to put all the facts on the table before Southern Downs Regional Council (SDRC) makes it final ruling on the controversial development application (DA) at its general meeting on Wednesday.
Semi-retired Wheatvale grazier, John Greacen, has extended invitations to members of SDRC and the applicant and said Southern Downs MP Lawrence Springborg was working to secure representatives from State Government departments involved in the environmental assessment.
Mr Greacen said if Warwick was to become the “chicken capital of Queensland” – a term used by journalist Chris McMahon in a Queensland Business Monthly article that appeared in The Courier newspaper on 27 June – then SDRC had to demand best practice and complete adherence to the Queensland Poultry Code and its own current planning scheme.
However, late last month Mr Greacen told the Southern Free Times he believed SDRC was “bending over backwards and watering down their own guildelines to accommodate” broiler farms.
The region has three chicken farms and one hatchery currently under development.
“ This proposed DA ignores serious environmental, amenity and planning issues,” Mr Greacen said.
“If more poultry broiler developments are expected throughout our shire every shire resident needs to be informed.
“The secrecy that currently exists is not acceptable,” he said.
The proposed DA relates to the extension of an already-approved, but yet to be built eight-shed chicken farm.
The applicant, South Tollburra Pty Ltd, is seeking to treble the capacity to 24-sheds with an annual throughput of about seven million birds.
SDRC director of planning and environment Ken Harris confirmed on Monday the DA would be judged against the superseded – and Mr Greacen contends, less stringent – Warwick Shire planning scheme.
But Mr Harris said the applicant was well within its rights to be assessed under the old regime.
“There are provisions under the Sustainable Planning Act… where people have a right to apply to councils to be assessed under the superseded planning scheme,” Mr Harris said.
“They still have to write to council and ask for consideration which these people did and they did it within the first year, which is what the act allows.”
The meat chicken industry makes a significant contribution to the Queensland economy, according to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
It employs about 4000 people and contributed $370 million in GVP to the Queensland economy in 2010–11.
The public forum will begin at 7pm.
