- Existing Rural Zoning under the Sunshine Coast Planning Scheme 2014 (a consistent zoning carried through from earlier local planning instruments)
- Regional Landscape and Rural Protection Area designation under the SEQ Regional Plan.
- Multiple State Planning Policy matters:
- Acid Sulfate Soils (ASS) over the entire site.
- Important Agricultural Area and Agricultural Land Class A and B
- Key Resource Area for sand (KRA156), plus separation area and transport route, covering a significant portion of the site.
- Erosion Prone Area.
- High Storm Tide Inundation Area.
- Some areas of High Ecological Significance Wetlands and Regulated Vegetation (Essential Habitat).
State Interests associated with this development
State Planning Policy 4 provides:
“Development in bushfire, flood, landslide, storm tide inundation or erosion prone natural hazard areas:
- avoids the natural hazard area; or
- where it is not possible to avoid the natural hazard area, development mitigates the risks to people and property to an acceptable or tolerable level.”
and includes the advice that:
“Planning schemes should acknowledge the risks identified through the flood risk assessment process. They should present a clear strategic settlement pattern that supports the achievement of broader flood risk management objectives for the LGA. … This may involve avoiding new urban development in flood-prone areas of intolerable risk, or excising higher risk areas from the urban footprint.”
Council and the State have in fact properly integrated the State Interests by zoning this land rural and excluding it from the Urban Footprint and outside the Urban Growth Management Boundary. Any flood risk assessment could only conclude that the risk for this site is “intolerable” as defined in the Policy. The public interest is not met by exposing the community to an “intolerable” flood risk.