Submissions closed today, so we do hope that you got to have your say to the NSW Department of Planning and Environment (DPE). The Brandy Hill & Seaham Action committee have had a busy time since our last post.

1. We met with councillors Paul LeMottee and Ken Jordan on 9th Nov, to get their support towards ensuring that the submissions from council and our group would have as much in common as possible. We asked this on the basis that we believed that DPE would be more likely to make a favourable ruling on this project if we were all asking for similar things.The councillors agreed and subsequently arranged a 30 minute meeting with council staff on Tuesday 15Th Nov, for us to present our concerns and what we would be seeking from DPE.
2. Our delegation met with mayor McKenzie and managers and staff from the planning department who had responsibility for preparing council’s submission. We were pleased with the response we had. Here is summary of the material presented  : meeting-with-psc-15-11-2016-bhsa
3. Along with the MCQAG group, we had signs made for installation along the main quarry haulage roads, to encourage as many submissions as possible. I hope you saw the ones on Brandy Hill Drive.
4. We contributed to the V.O.W.W. submission.
   We will post that here if they agree.
5. We finalised the submission from BHSA. While it is impossible to say everything that everyone wants and in the way that you would want it said, we hope you think we have done a reasonable job on your behalf. A lot of effort went into it.
   The 10 page document can be viewed here.  bhsa-mcq-submission-final
6.  PSC provided us with a copy of their submission. We were very pleased to see that they obviously listened to our delegation and agree with it our position. Our councils submission supported us very strongly. If we get permission, it will be posted on our website for you to see.

So many thanks to everyone that made their own submissions. The next phase is for DPE to provide all submissions to Daracon and ask for their responses. We expect that a Voluntary Planning Agreement (VPA) will be mapped out with the three councils and that the Planning Assessment Commission (PAC)  will be involved in the decision process. Daracon continues to stall the court case with Dungog Shire Council, having asked for a deferment of the hearing set for early 2017, until September 2017! It will be interesting to see how that plays out, and whether the DPE will want the court case resolved before making its ruling, or not.

It is possible that the PAC may arrange a further public meeting on the matter before making their recommendations to the DPE, so there is still a long way to go before this quarry matter is decided.

There is no news on the Brandy Hill Quarry expansion EIS.

That is all for now.