Veolia's plans to build a waste processing centre at Invermay have been knocked back by the City of Launceston council.
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The council rejected the development application to build a recycling centre at 19-25 Churchill Park Drive, the former Humes concrete manufacturing site, on Thursday at its meeting.
Four people spoke in support of the project at the meeting, all with ties to the proposed development, stating compliance on all levels could be met to produce a state of the art facility.
However, fifty-eight representations, a petition with 384 signatures and 17 people, speaking against the matter at the meeting, all voiced their concerns against the development.
Their main concerns were based on odour, noise, traffic congestion and dust affecting nearby residents, deeming it an inappropriate site for such a development.
The council agreed it was inappropriate, based on the noise emissions, and rejected it.
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All of the councillors noted it was one of the hardest considerations they had had to make in recent times, mainly due to the number of representations and correspondence.
Initially councillor Alan Harris proposed an amendment to change the proposed opening hours to reduce noise emissions in the early morning and late afternoons, but it did not pass.
Deputy mayor Danny Gibson then introduced a motion to refuse the application based predominantly on noise emissions, which was passed to applause from the public gallery.
"I believe ... that due to the inability to make the reasonableness of the impact of noise and the harm that this will have on the amenity of the nearby residents. This is sufficient reason to reject the application," Mr Gibson said.
Before the councillors voted on the matter, an independent consultant had assessed the DA and recommended it for approval subject to 50 conditions ranging from usages to start times to noise and waste storage.
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Councillor Hugh McKenzie noted he believed the consultant's conditions and the reports in the DA tried to mitigate any noise issues. However he said the representations at the meeting had swayed him a lot more towards a non-approval.
"The major issue that we're dealing with here today is the sound attenuation on the property," he said.
"There is no doubt if I lived at 1 Oswald Street, 3 Oswald St or 5 Oswald St or any of the streets that are just close by there, that I would be concerned about the noise escaping from that business."
As the site was zoned as light industrial, the proposed usage was discretionary under the planning scheme meaning it was up to the council to deem it an appropriate use of the site or not.
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