The LEDA Holdings/Sydney Metro Airports Business Park proposal aims to annexe Airport Reserve on Milperra Road for the new development site on adjoin airport land. If this happens it will destroy the ecological values of one of the last remaining examples of Cooks River Castlereagh Ironbark Forest left in Bankstown. Neither LEDA nor Bankstown Airpport Limited own any part of Airport Reserve, which is State owned Crown land zoned for recreational purposes, but want a 60 metre wide driveway through it to the Airport precinct, a 200 metre long slipway for truck access, and a bus stop, which together will destroy the integrity of an Endangered Ecological Community that Council has earmarked on its Bushland Mangement Plan for rehabilitation. Airport Reserve is also the site of multiple grants to the Society from the NSW Government Environmental Trust for bush regeneration purposes.

Examine for yourself the Development Plan as proposed http://www.bankstownbusinessestate.com/

Despite all the impacts they have planned for Airport Reserve, it is not even mentioned in the Development Plan. Check out Section 2 Contents picture for a view of the bushland and site of the proposed bus stop, and Fig. 4.1 Staging Plan for the location of the bus stop, slipway and driveway impacts on Airport Reserve. Then see Fig. 2.2 Local Context which shows the entire strip of Airport Reserve located outside the development area. It looks like they simply expect the State Government to fall in line and let them do whatever they want with the reserve as though they did in fact own it. Now look at p.46 artist’s impression of the access from Milperra Road through Airport Reserve and note what is missing from it – the bushland.

BBS is not opposed to development on land owned by BAL, but environmentally sensitive publicly owned Crown land like Airport Reserve should not be swallowed by it. There is already vehicular access to the development site from the east and west, in fact the major multi lane entry point to the airport development precinct at Bunnings on Milperra Road was built for just this kind of development. The bus stop could quite easily be accommodated within the development site itself, not on environmentally sensitive open space bushland.

We urge you to sign the petition and write to Premier Mike Baird c/- Parliament House, Macquarie Road, Sydney 2000, to state your objection to the alienation of yet more open space in Bankstown to private development.