A proposal to rezone land on the riverbanks of Bacchus Marsh will head to an independent panel for review, largely due to resident and activist concerns that future construction could create flood risk and harm local platypuses.
What happened? At its October meeting, Moorabool Shire Council voted unanimously to appointment an independent panel to field concerns over a proposed rezoning along the Werribee River. The appointment would go through Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny.
Councillor Paul Tatchell commented that the town is “growing at a ridiculous pace”.
What’s proposed: The area in question sits at the intersection between Halletts Way and Adelong Way, and requires rezoning from agricultural land to residential. It also includes the subdivision of a 2.6 hectare property into five lots.
Residents shared 82 submissions during the community engagement portion of the process, many citing their concerns for environmental impact.
Groups like the Bacchus Marsh Platypus Alliance and Moorabool Environment Group argued that one particular part of the area, a 4,465 square metre block dubbed “lot D”, should remain a protected, public space.
The concerns: Natasha Evans, Vice President of the Bacchus Marsh Platypus Alliance, told the Brolga the initial biodiversity assessment of the area made several errors, mislabelling a threatened plant as non-indigenous and making no mention of the area's local platypus population.
“It’s been farming land forever and a day, but because it’s a really beautiful open paddock, right next to the river, many people consider it part of the reserve and a lot of animals use it - kangaroos, wallabies, birds of prey, lots of lizards and snakes,” Evans said.
Second go: The firm responsible for the assessment recently returned to the site and delivered a second report.
“Melbourne Water also put in a few suggestions, about the drainage aspect,” Evans told the Brolga. “It’s basically underneath a 100-year flood zone, so they said it’s off the cards”.
The platypuses: Evans said the issue with developing the area above the river is the sediment, and it could harm the area’s platypuses.
“When they break ground, use earthmoving machinery, all that soil goes into the river,” she said. “So platypuses struggle to find enough food, there’s a lot of turbidity. It basically washes the macro invertebrates the platypus feeds on down the river”.
What next? The planning panel is set for February 2027, with no final decision likely until mid-2027.
“We haven’t been able to stop all of it,” Evans said. “But the land below it is going to be revegetated with ecologically-correct plants and handed back to council in two years,”
“So it’s not all bad things.”