LANDHOLDERS along the ACT border roads want Yass Valley Council to enforce planning regulations before a growing number of Canberra haulage trucks hit children getting off school buses.
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“If something happens it will be an absolute disaster,” says activist Geoff Gorrie, president of the Mount Spring Association.
He says the council’s engineering and planning chiefs must deal with “Canberra trucking companies destroying community roads”.
The council says truck companies are exploiting a loophole in the law, but Mr Gorrie wants tighter policing of the trucks.
“They are not supposed to be operating in certain hours to avoid school buses.
People out here have photos showing kids coming off buses and trucks careering by,” he said.
Mr Gorrie said Spring Range, Nanima, Wallaroo, Carrington, Murrumbateman and Dog Trap roads are crumbling under a surge in trucks over the past three years.
“We would like to see the council build a truck parking area.
They did a study and their figures are overblown, something like $2 million to put in a truck parking area.
That is a huge amount of money.”
Mr Gorrie says even though the trucks are not meant to be carrying loads onto the rural roads, they finish a shift and bring home a load of clean, or dirty fill, and dump it on their property.
“You can see it on the hill sides, these dimples where an individual truck load has been dumped,” he said.
Yass Valley Council director of planning and environmental services Chris Berry said complaints had come from Sutton through to Mount Spring, of trucks using a loophole in NSW legislation, which allows 600mm of fill to be dumped on a property without approval. Mr Berry said the truck parking proposal, with access to the Barton Highway, would need appropriate pavement strength for turning vehicles, security, lighting, fencing, and automatic gates. It would cost about $1.5 million and was too expensive.
“We can’t regulate them, they are driving on public roads. Because they are not regulated we can’t apply any of our haulage route development contributions,” Mr Berry said.
Truck operators were moving out of Canberra’s urban areas because of complaints, and wanted to isolate themselves from neighbours.
“So a rural residential property on the NSW side of the border is very attractive for them,” Mr Berry said.
Problems arose when truck owners moved their family on to a rural block and did not lodge a development application to run their business from home.
“In the Mount Spring area, we are trying to ensure people have an appropriate approval, we try to limit approvals, to balance lifestyle purposes and people who try to run a business from home,” he said.
“Yes, we know they can damage roads, and yes, we know they can be a bit of a concern to other ratepayers driving light vehicles.
“They can be intimidating when you come across them when you are driving the family sedan,” Mr Berry said.
