DEVELOPMENT APPEAL — residential community title subdivision — likely impacts on ferry service
Quick Take
1An existing capacity deficiency in infrastructure serving a site does not relieve an applicant of the need to identify and address the likely impacts its development will cause to that infrastructure under s 4.15(1)(b) of the EPA Act. Nor does residential zoning mean such impacts were resolved at the rezoning stage.
2Consistent with the persuasive burden in Australian Protein Recyclers v Goulburn Mulwaree Shire Council [2006] NSWLEC 641, a bespoke transport mode may require more than a standard one-hour peak assessment. On the facts, the assessment was inadequate because it did not model a ferry service already at or over capacity across a two-hour peak, off-peak periods, or maintenance periods when a single smaller ferry operates. The resulting unknown impacts warranted refusal.
3Impacts not raised in the contentions cannot ground refusal, even where the evidence would support them. Here, the development's effect of increasing wharf queuing beyond existing vehicle storage capacity was not pleaded, although the Court indicated it would otherwise have found that impact required mitigation by the applicant rather than the roads authority.
