If it isn’t one thing, it’s another at Cherrabah Resort.
“Seriously unhappy landowners” gathered at the Keoghs Road entrance to the property last week to discuss an application lodged with the SDRC for the resort to initiate industrial water extraction from the site.
The owners of Cherrabah, Joyful View Garden Real Estate Development Resort Pty Ltd, lodged the application with only 21 days to object or make a submission to council. The application will not be considered in the December 17 council meeting as the public notification period must be concluded prior.
The formal public notification associated with the application commenced on November 28 with the notification period ending December 19, a council spokesperson confirmed.
Documents related to the material change of use application lodged with the SDRC date back several months. A bushfire management plan, as part of the application, was completed in May this year.
According to one neighbour, the resort has a license obtained in 2020 from the Department of Natural Resources to draw 97 megalitres a year from the underground sub-artesian structures until 2111.
The history is long and complicated. In the Sustainable Development, Corporate and Community Services Committee Meeting in August 2020, Joyful View Garden Real Estate’s application for commercial ground water extraction was tabled. That report outlined that on December 18, 2019, council approved a material change of use at the site to establish a water extraction and distribution facility there. A number of conditions and changes were proposed and discussed including sealing and widening Keoghs Road to the intersection with O’Deas Road. The applicant requested an alternative to that and other conditions.
Public submissions in 2019 included criticisms of the development’s impact on livestock and grazing due to low water supplies in the area. Indeed, the Southern Downs was in the grip of a multi-year drought at the time. Further criticisms of water allocation, contamination of groundwater from range shooting and toileting at music festivals were also raised.
At the time, The Guardian reported that Queensland government experts raised “repeated warnings” about the project to allow 96m litre a year bottled water extraction “in a severely drought-hit area”.
“Documents obtained by The Guardian Australia show how longstanding concerns about groundwater security at Cherrabah were overridden by changes to Queensland law enacted by Campbell Newman’s government in 2013”, the article claimed.
According to reports, Joyful View commissioned a study in 2009 “that was the basis for subsequent water extraction applications.”
However, “the study contained repeated qualifications that its modelling could not be relied upon for a period longer than 12 months.” Sources to The Guardian claimed that there were many errors in that study and that it “overstated the amount of rainfall recharge to groundwater by a factor of almost 20”.
However, in December 2019, former Mayor Tracie Dobie, Cr Rod Kelly, Cr Jo McNally, Cr Neil Meiklejohn and Cr Sheryl Windle voted in favour of the application. Cr Cameron Gow, Cr Vic Pennisi and Cr Yve Stocks voted against and the motion passed. Cr Marika McNichol was absent for that meeting.
According to a source with knowledge of prior council discussions, the resort planned to tap the Stanthorpe Adamellite aquifer. According to an Emu Swamp Dam Environmental Impact Statement with the Queensland State Government, that water source “has low permeability” which is “indicative of poor aquifer prospects with groundwater occurrence within the Stanthorpe Adamellite…”
What’s in the new proposal?
According to a report from Bennett and Bennett, who have been engaged by Joyful View to prepare a Town Planning Report for the material change of use application, there are changes that will be asked of council.
Stage one includes annual production of 16,560 tons will require “six large trucks, each with a capacity of 14 tons, per day and a team of 10 employees. Stage two will increase to an annual production of 34,500 tons and stage three to 96,000 tons, with 30 trucks per day and a team of 15 employees.
The report agrees that this is an expansion “of the use approved under” the previous material change of use. The attached traffic report calls for “no upgrades to the external road network”.
According to one resident, “this is the road that Council said was not capable to supporting three days of a music festival.”
