Suez, a private company and Brisbane City Council`s waste management contractor, is seeking development approval to significantly expand their operations at Nudgee Beach. The expansion includes a transport depot for waste collection vehicles, and refuelling, maintenance and truck washing facilities.

Despite the large amount of available land on the current site, the Suez proposal includes opening an access road for 76 heavy trucks and 90 cars at the beach end of Nudgee Road, close to the entrances of the boat ramp, jetty and dog park. It is very close to the RAMSAR-protected wetlands and within the Council’s Wetland Overlay zone.

This proposed access road and location of expanded facilities not only threatens the environmental values of the area, they also put the safety of weekday road users at great risk. Nudgee Road at the beach end is narrow and unsuitable for large volumes of heavy traffic. Each weekday, buses full of schoolchildren and seniors plus hundreds of cyclists, families and tourists, use it to visit the area.

The Brisbane City Council showed vision and foresight in preserving the Boondall Wetlands and making Nudgee Beach today a peaceful, year round, environmentally significant playground for the people of the city and beyond. This Suez proposal significantly threatens that achievement.

We therefore call upon the Brisbane City Council to refuse the current Suez application and ask that it bring forward a revised application which moves the expansion of its facility further away from the Boondall Wetlands; makes truck, heavy vehicle, and staff access at the back of the facility away from Nudgee Road; includes a more substantial vegetation and / or noise buffer between industrial activities and the wetlands, and; proposes a more appropriate treatment for any odours arising from operations.