THE Port Stephens Council has approved a development application for 37 Canomii Close, Nelson Bay, modifying the height requirement by 27 percent, or 2.5m over current building standards.

Any development application which requests to vary a development standard by greater than ten percent has to be reported to Council.

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The proposal also seeks to remove existing vegetation on the site and construct two semi-detached three storey dwellings and a one into two lot Torrens title subdivision.

Councillors Giacomo Arnott, Peter Francis, Jason Wells and Leah Anderson expressed their concerns over the development being in close proximity to a koala buffer zone, requesting the motion to be deferred for two weeks to seek additional information about the koala population.

“The Council report only details an assessment of the site itself – it doesn’t detail any sort of assessment of the surroundings and whether the loss of seventeen trees in the koala buffer zone will have an impact on the preferred koala habitat that is approximately seven metres away,” Councillor Arnott said.

“With all the information we have about koalas, we know that once they get in an area, they like to stay there and if their favourite tree gets chopped down, it can have a big impact on their ability to survive.

“I just don’t want to be making a decision on something that might have an impact on our local koalas when we’re looking at their extinction in the near future,” Cr Arnott said.

Councillor Anderson said that after a site visit, she could state that there may not be any koala feed trees, but that “it’s not to say that koalas don’t move through that corridor to other koala feed trees outside of the development area”.

This deferral was not supported by a majority of the Council and the motion was lost on the Mayor’s casting vote.

“I will not be supporting this deferral,” Mayor Palmer said.

“It’s a residential block of land that we are talking about.

“We can talk until the cows come home around 109 Foreshore Shore Drive and that being Council-owned land, but all of this has spilled over now into residential blocks of land.

“So, if you own a block of land out there, you may need to be careful about what you can do on it,” he said.

Mayor Palmer stated that he “does not know where this will end”.

“Maybe over the next couple of weeks we will be able to have a candlelight vigil on the block or something like that,” he said, referencing an event held regarding a potential controversial sale of 109 Foreshore Drive, Salamander Bay.

By Tara CAMPBELL