North Byron Parklands - Cultural Events Site

I disclose that McCartney Young Lawyers undertakes work for Byron Shire
Parklands and associated entities. In undertaking this work I have
seen first hand how this organisation achieves a balance between a
respect for the environment and undertaking development. They are very
closely scrutinized by authorities and the public and, having regard
to the type of development they undertake and the conditions imposed
on that development, they are very successful in satisfying their
obligations at law and the wider competing interests. Others will note
how the use of Byron Shire Parklands for various purposes (including
Splendour and Falls) achieves economic growth, employment and provides
a valuable resource to the community. I endorse those sentiments.
However my insight into the operation of Parklands, together with
legal constraints imposed on it, should give the Minister and the
Department confidence that the operation will continue to operate
lawfully and it will continue to respect the immediate and surrounding
environment. Regards Michael Young

Please keep Splendour in the Grass and Falls Festival at this great
location.

North byron Parklands has supported many local industries including our
own & from what I have seen always tried their best to support local
where they can I believe it is a great venue & they always bring such
diverse arts & culture festivals to life I think we are very lucky to
have such world renowned festivals on our doorstep

Our organisation fully supports The approval of the parklands becoming a
permanent festival site. After working with the management team on
many festivals we know they are committed to protecting and improving
the land and providing a wonderful home for music and arts in the
northern rivers.

I regularly attend the Falls and Splendour events as do my family. I
support the permanent use of the North Byron Parklands as a cultural
events site and also support partnerships the events have with local
businesses. The Northern Rivers is a creative hub of this country and
the North Byron Parklands and it's festivals express this and
therefore must be supported.

I support this application. Byron Parklands provides for ongoing events
of cultural significance, opportunities for employment in the region
in niche and more general industries, and fosters and supports local
tourism opportunities.

I am long time local resident (I live within 10km of the site) and
support North Byron Parklands's application. Events held at Parklands
contribute significantly to the local economy. They employ large
cohorts of local people across a broad spectrum of roles, particularly
young people, to whom job opportunities are often limited in this
region. I personally do not attend the larger events, but am yet to be
negatively impacted by them when they are held. Traffic, noise and
environmental impact is managed tremendously well for an event of this
size. I strongly believe that Parklands is currently under utilised as
a cultural precinct for the northern rivers region and look forward to
seeing the scope of the site extended to include more small and
medium-sized events.

I wish to put forward the following concerns I have with the plans for
the State Government to increase the capacity and frequency of events
at the North Byron Parklands: - State Government have moved to
overrule locally democratically elected council representatives to
grant a private corporation to bring over 100,000 additional party
goers to a pristine coastal rainforest, beaches and wildlife - The
associated litter, plastic and pollution that will be dumped on our
area will have a devastating impact on our natural environment with
tonnes of plastic bottles, broken glass, and discarded cheap camping
equipment dumped in our forests and rivers - Police, fire and water
officials are very concerned that there is insufficient infrastructure
to cope with the fire, safety, crime and environmental hazards such as
bushfires and pollution to waterways

Please keep this beautiful and well-planned site for great events that
enhance the viability of our region culturally and financially. The
owners of this site work diligently to ensure that it fulfills all
criteria for use, and care about the people who participate in their
events.

Please make North Byron Parklands the permanent home for various cultural
events

I support the Byron Bay parklands being a permanent spot for both
Splendor in the Grass and Falls Festival!!

As a festival producer and arts programmer in the Northern Rivers i write
to confirm my support for Splendour in the Grass's application to stay
at North Byron Parklands. Splendour provides a vital platform for
artists and artsworkers in this region to further develop their
practice, create pathways and build capacity within the arts industry.
To loose the vast opportuities that Splendour provides to the local
creative industries would be a vital and devastationg blow to this
region.

I strongly oppose the approval of this development. I feel that local
residents are being asked to make unreasonable sacrifices to our way
of life for the sake of economic greed on the part of NBP. My concerns
as a resident of Yelgun are: With the current 2 festivals our access
is already impacted. There has been a security checkpoint at the end
of our road with car passes given to residents, this has been somewhat
successful in slowing down the number of festival goers coming into
our road but has not completely stopped the illegal campers and has
become more lax during recent festivals. A combination of this
checkpoint and the extremely large volume of traffic on our only
access road (Tweed Valley Way) makes it awkward and inconvenient to go
about our daily business including going out to work, running
businesses, going to the shops, getting to and from school. During
SITG there is no safe place for us to meet our regular school bus on
Tweed Valley Way, which requires us to battle through the traffic to
collect children directly from school. Some neighbours I know go away
for the festival period pulling their children out of school.
Increased festivals means more missed school and will impact on our
local children's educations. Our friends and family are also impacted
for this as it makes it inconvenient and unpleasant to visit us during
festival periods. Such a huge number of people in a normally sparsely
populated area puts a big strain on our telecommunications. As the
local mobile towers struggle to keep up with the high volume of calls,
texts and mobile data it becomes very difficult to get calls and texts
through, limiting our communications both business and personal. The
communications problem also leads to the question of what would happen
in an emergency situation. In our own personal emergency we would
struggle to get a call through and to get help in. In a larger
emergency situation we would likely be forgotten or blocked from
evacuation by the extreme volume of patrons trying to exit the NBP
site. These situations have been looked at by our police and emergency
services and the outcomes look far from ideal for even the current
numbers for the site. The operations of 1 business - NBP - and the
international conglomerate who uses their land, should not be given
precedence over the many small businesses (mostly farms) that operate
out of Yelgun. They are not high traffic operations but many rely on
getting livestock, produce and workers in and out of the valley. They
are the type of businesses that keep this community going year round.
Noise pollution is an ongoing issue, with parklands operating at
levels far above the levels set by the NSW Industrial Noise Policy.
NBP insistence that they cannot keep to the accepted policy levels
shows they are in the wrong location to operate music festivals. My
more general concerns as part of this community are: With 10's of
thousands of people in our normally very small community it becomes
hard to function normally on a day to day basis. This could be
difficulty finding parking in town to go to work, getting in to shops
for every day supplies, accessing the library, post office or
centrelink. While extra police and emergency services are brought in
for the event there is still a large overflow of patrons into the
surrounding townships which then puts a strain on our local police
force and emergency services. Not only is this a waste of taxpayer
dollars, it diverts our local resources so services are tied up in
town dealing with drunk teenagers and misdemeanours when those
services may be required by residents in other parts of the shire.
There is also extra wear and tear on our roads and public amenities,
putting a large strain on council resources in a shire with an already
very low ratepayer to visitor ratio. The NBP site is in one of the
last remaining wildlife corridors from the ocean to the mountains in
this area. There are several pockets of forest in and around the site
that are home to a large variety of native wildlife. The noise
pollution that these animals have to deal with is very disruptive to
their feeding, sleeping and movement. There is also a large amount of
pollution coming from the site into these areas. The acres and acres
of discarded camping gear and general detritus may be cleaned up after
each festival but the many thousands of smaller bits of rubbish that
blow into the surrounding bushland and millions of pieces of
microplastic (eg glitter) cannot be cleaned up by a few work teams and
will stay in our environment and wash out to see for decades to come.
The original approval for the 5 year trial specified that after that
period control would revert to Byron Shire Council. I feel that BSC
has a much better chance of understanding the needs of our community
and what our local resources can cope with so decisions on further
festival numbers, capacity and developments should revert to Council
as originally agreed. Any increase to the number of patrons or events
on the site will exacerbate the above problems. I implore you to
consider the local residents and communities and not allow this
development to change the nature of our local community NBP and SITG
have called out to their customers to submit in favour of this
proposal with little or no background information on the impact on
local residents, communities and wildlife, as a resident of the area
immediately surrounding the site in question I would hope that my
concerns of direct impact on our lives will be weighted accordingly
and given greater consideration than those only worried about missing
out on a party.

On your website it states you will be raising the number of Splendour tix
to 42,500, then to 50,000. This is way too many people for our little
shire to accomodate in any case. We were inundated during the last
Falls Fest and Brunz was overrun with people to the point where
residents could not get a parking place or get into a restaurant. Why
should we have to deal with such a huge amount of people twice a year,
and more festivals during the year? We live here year round and the
pressure on our little villages is way too much as far as
infrastructure. Giving council money doesn't make up for ruining our
lifestyle. I am not in favour of this increase.

I love the festivals. I like to attend them, and I believe they are good
for the local business community.

This site has been fantastic for businesses in surrounding towns which in
turn has has produced more jobs for local people. Not only has the
upturn in tourists attending the area peaked during events but I
believe also all year round. As a close resident of the site I can say
the organisers have been extremely diligent in replying to any queries
we may have and worked hard in improving and minimising the impact and
effect of the festivals on our day to day lives. The venue itself is
so impressive now and has improved each event - I can only imagine
that with approval to become a permanant venue it will become even
better, more positive for our area and exciting. I support this
Application 100%.

I believe the community of people who attend, work and support Splendour
at Parklands benefit from the event being held at this location due to
the site being cared for by the organisers, and the chance for
creative expression to be showcased to a wide demographic of people is
necessary for positive social change.

We support this application for Parklands to become a permanent music,
arts and cultural event site for an array of pertinent & important
reasons - most notably for the mass employment provided to a huge
array of artists, professionals, contractors & staff working within
the entertainment industry alongside of the long term cultural
benefits.

Keep the magical amphitheatre alive!!

A State Significant Site... REALLY? What is significant to our beautiful
state about this festival venue or "cultural event" site where
hundreds of thousands of festival patrons take drugs and sprinkle
glitter onto our beautiful land. I have endured Splendour in the Grass
and Falls Festival being in my backyard for the past 5 years. I have a
young family and moved into this area of the Byron shire because it
WASN'T Byron Bay and was quiet and a small community. That community
gets ruined as we are invaded with tens of thousands of party goers
every few months (and that is as it currently stands). I have slept
with ear plugs in when the festivals are in town and the wind is
blowing the wrong way. I wonder if the festival patrons really need it
as loud as that when I can hear it in my bed in South Golden Beach? My
partner runs a small local building company and relies on being able
to be contacted via his mobile phone. Year after year we struggle with
signal and simply sending text messages is a nightmare. This is with
just 35,000 patrons. What is going to happen when there are 50,000
patrons taking up more of the signal? 50,000 is 3.5 times the rate
payers of the entire Byron shire. Just getting to and from work
becomes a mission during these times. Our family no longer can visit
over the Xmas New Year period as the holiday rentals are all taken up
with festival goers. These festival goers come back to South Golden
Beach once the festival is over and continue to party through the
nights. The Byron Shire sees millions of tourists a year as its is,
our roads can not cope at the moment, let alone with hundreds of
thousands more during festival times. If there are 50,000 patrons at a
festival on one day and then a new lot in the next there could be
possible 80,000 people in the area at any one time. There is nothing
significant about this site. It is 51% owned by an American company.
Millions of Australian dollars leaving the country. I wonder how many
times a festival gets to get it wrong (eg noise/ traffic / patron
numbers etc) and still have an chance to apply for permanency? Let me
ask you.... look at Parklands Emergency Response Plan and ask yourself
would you let your child go to a festival there?