Crowdfunding starts to help save Spring Creek

THE Greater Torquay Alliance (GTA) is urging the community to put its money where its mouth is about the Spring Creek valley.

The community group has started a crowdfunding effort to find the “tens of thousands of dollars” needed to support its barrister at the coming Surf Coast Distinctive Area and Landscape (DAL) public hearing, which begins on March 15.

A GTA statement said 94 per cent of the 3,161 submissions to the DAL were in favour of the draft Statement of Planning Policy’s Option 2, which rules out development in the valley.

However, the GTA notes this will be only one factor in Planning Panels Victoria’s eventual recommendation to the state Planning Minister, with the panel to make its decision “based on arguments on planning and environmental matters”.

“The developers who want to urbanise the Spring Creek valley will be making those arguments with Queen’s Counsels, barristers, solicitors and expert witnesses and they come at great cost,” the GTA states.

“The GTA is the only community group participating at the hearing that has a barrister and we need funds to pay for that.

“Our barrister will be taking on the legal teams and expert witnesses of all of the developers so it is very important that we are well resourced to take the battle to them.

“This will cost tens of thousands of dollars to do it properly.”

GTA has started a GoFundMe campaign and is asking people to consider making a financial contribution in support, saying that Option 1 – which earmarks part of the valley for “low density ecologically sustainable development” – could deliver “almost 2,000 homes and some 5,000 people on the doorstep of Bells Beach”.

“We’ve all seen the traffic jams and lack of parking during the busy holiday periods but imagine that all year round,” GTA president Andrew Cherubin said.

Our permanent population is 20,000 and that swells to 40,000 people at peak times. On our current trajectory we are heading for a permanent population of 40,000 in two decades. Now is the opportunity to curb that trajectory and take control, we need your help to stop development in Spring Creek.”

The GTA is also one of the local community groups supporting a new Community Woodland Concept for the land 1km west of Duffields Road.

“Wouldn’t it be terrific if land within the Spring Creek valley could be turned into a public space that would respect the Indigenous culture, protect the fauna and regenerate the native flora, a 100-year vison driven by the community?” Surf Coast Energy Group president Graeme Stockton said.

“This is only possible if we can convince the panel to recommend Option 2.”

Donations can be made to Greater Torquay Alliance Inc., BSB: 633 000, account number:163 806 441.

For more information, head to protectspringcreek.org.