Council funds student fight against development

The Singapore based Frasers Group plans to build 11 towers on the site containing more than 1,600 apartments and 90,000 square metres of shopping space.

The Greens estimate the project will consume 1.2 billion litres of water a year, and generate thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

Last night the council agreed to provide $20,000 towards a Sydney law-student's legal case against the New South Wales Government.

The case will be heard by the Land and Environment Court next month.

The council's Deputy Mayor, Chris Harris, says the Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, has missed an opportunity to approve a sustainable development.

"There's a great opportunity to make this self sufficient for water [but] there's no provision for that," he said.

"Water's going to come from Warragamba Dam - business as usual."

"There's great opportunity to recycle the sewage from this site, [but] what's going to happen [is], the sewage is going to be pumped into the ocean - business as usual."

"There's been no change, there've been no initiatives from the Minister for Planning to address the climate change impacts of this development."

"Just the cars on the site, they'll contribute about 12,000 tonnes a year of CO2 into the atmosphere."

Mr Sartor says the council is acting irresponsibly.

"It just seems to me that sometimes avenues of the legal profession like to generate work when there really isn't much merit to some of the issues," he said.

http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/26/1962092.htm