I am writing to you today to voice my strong objections to the proposed quarry. I am writing as a mother, wife and member of a community I have been part of for over 20 years.
I realise quarries have and will continue to have a part in our daily lives, however it would be negligent of me not to stand up and fight knowing what I now know about the affects of mining on our fragile planet.
I have always doubted my one voice would make a difference, but I sincerely hope that as a collective, myself, my community, and you, our elected officials, can and will make a difference by saying NO to Monaro Rock and their proposed quarry.

My family chose to move to Royalla because of its fantastic location, 12 minutes from Calwell ACT, yet completely surrounded by hills and valleys with a great view of the Brindabella mountains.
The commute into town was also a big consideration and it remains so today. We need to travel in at least twice a day for school pickup/drop off, and more frequently for other errands.
When we first moved here, the Monaro Highway was an easy run into Calwell and the Old Cooma Road, heading to Queanbeyan, was hardly used. That is no longer true, but it is still manageable. I fear the extra proposed traffic will make it not only unmanageable, but also dangerous.
The Monaro Highway is becoming a heavily travelled road, with more and more people choosing to live rurally. It also has its share of trucks using this road for transport. In winter it is particularly hazardous, with the addition of thousands of cars coming from and going to the snow. On any given Sunday between June and October the snow traffic heading back toward Canberra can have me stuck at the T-intersection on the Monaro Highway for 10 minutes or more. Then, once on, I get about three kilometres and the traffic starts slowing due to congestion at the roundabout at Calwell, nine kilometres away. This road would become truly dangerous with the addition of 500 quarry trucks trying to turn onto it, even outside of snow season. Even with the addition of an acceleration lane there is no way a fully laden quarry truck can get up to 100km/ph in the gaps provided by traffic. I believe it will become dangerous, if not deadly, 500 slow moving vehicles per day will cause havoc on that highway.
The portion of the Monaro highway between Old Cooma Road and the Calwell roundabout is, for the most part, hilly and windy, and the number of absolutely stupid acts of overtaking on blind corners, completely ignoring the unbroken lines that I have seen drivers do over the past few years is mind boggling. These quarry trucks are going to exacerbate this stupidity due to their slowness and frequency, and I do not want to be travelling a road that puts my life and that of my family at risk for the sake of a quarry. Another thing to consider is the rapid deterioration of the road with the addition of these trucks. The Monaro sustains severe damage, in the form of potholes, with the current amount of heavy vehicles traversing it. I cannot imagine the damage the additional trucks will cause, and I cannot see the quarry compensating me for damages sustained to my car when there are too many holes to avoid.
Having said all that, the Old Cooma Road has me more concerned. It is a single lane, narrow, windy road with a 100km speed limit. Once a quiet road, it has become busy due to the opening of suburbs like Little Burra, Mount Campbell, Burabella and a huge community at Googong. Not to mention all the people who reside directly off Old Cooma Road.
Even if the ACT grant permission for Monaro Rock to pop a road directly onto the Monaro highway, this will take years to complete, and for that time they will need to use Old Cooma Road for access. This road was not built for the kind of heavy traffic/vehicles proposed by the quarry. Given Monaro Rock is seeking a 30 year licence, I can’t see Old Cooma Road being maintained to an acceptable standard or in an acceptable timeframe. In fact I fear it will be under constant maintenance with decreased speed limits due to never ending roadworks, which will also cause annoyance and impatience. I can only imagine the additional time it would take me to get into Calwell or Queanbeyan with this added congestion, however I can safely say it will be much greater than the current 15 minutes.
Anyone who has lived out here for any period of time and travelled these roads daily, will tell you this will become dangerous very quickly, due to speed and impatience, leading to silly mistakes with deadly consequences.
Also of concern is the narrowing of the road, over time, due to slippage of the edge, caused by trucks having to move over to accommodate each other on the narrow road. Another issue is drivers slowing down considerably as they are not comfortable with trucks coming the other way, especially if they need to move over for them. All of this increases the risk of potentially serious accidents.
Another major concern is the noise from the blasting. Our home is 4.5 kms from the proposed sight.
We did not move out of the suburbs to rural acreage to hear rock blasting from a quarry, or 500 trucks per day using their compression breaks while traveling along Old Cooma Road.
We moved here for the ability to decompress, and to leave the chaos and noise of town behind. Surely if I have to seek my neighbours permission to erect a dwelling, Monaro Rock would need to seek ours (as a community), for what they propose to do?
In addition to noise pollution, clearing a site for a quarry is an uncontionable act against the environment.
If allowed, the quarry will destroy over 100 hectares of land within a few kilometres of thousands of NSW and ACT residents. This land is home to hundreds of species of plants and animals, some of which are endangered. Not to mention what an awful scab on the hillside a blasting quarry would be. If I wanted to see that, I would have moved to Broken Hill or Coober Pedy. It seems the options are endless in Australia if i wanted to live near a mining facility! Therefore I am asking, when is enough, enough?
Aren’t the two quarries already operating within 10kms of Royalla - Holcim and Heidelberg - sufficient? How many quarries are needed in one area? Just because we are not as heavily populated as a city, and our voices are fewer, we all moved out here to enjoy a certain lifestyle. This lifestyle is being continually threatened by allowing a few people to dictate what happens in the lives of thousands.
I would also like to understand how the dust and other toxins generated by the quarry are going to affect the people living in the area. The environmental reports say the dust will not effect homes outside a one kilometre radius, but having lived here for 20 years, I can say without a doubt that the wind speeds out here are much higher than indicated in the report and blow from non-conventional directions. Using a weather station 8kms away, located in a suburb stuck in a valley in Tuggeranong ACT, is not an indicator of wind speeds and directions on a hillside in Royalla. There is no way we will avoid the very dangerous silica dust at a distance of 4.5kms.
As a breast cancer survivor I do not want anything to potentially threaten my remission, and given the proven toxicity of silica dust, and its link to various cancers, I am outraged at the thought of some corporation being allowed to build a facility that will release toxins into the air in a residential setting. Frankly I am angry that I have to put my health in the hands of a report that says the dust will not reach me. Who will be telling the dust about the invisible 1km barrier that it is not allowed to breach?
Also of concern is the water Monaro Rock is proposing to use annually to help combat the dust issue - Up to 42.4 million litres of extracted groundwater. I cannot fathom this amount of water being wasted on dust suppression. Water is a finite resource and nobody can say when it will run out. However the affects of its slowing can already be seen in downstream towns, where traditional high water consumption crops have been replaced by other, more drought tolerant crops, due to the drastic drop in the water availability. So let me ask you, how can anyone justify using so much water on dust - not drinking, not watering stock, not showering, not keeping crops alive, but dust suppression. I can assure you, no one in this area who has had to buy water due to lack of rain, or watched their garden die because our dams are empty, will be able to reconcile it being poured onto the ground at a quarry we did not ask for and do not want.
I am certain the submission provided by Monaro Rock talks extensively about the importance of this quarry going forward and what benefits it will provide. It may even explain why we need a 5th quarry within a radius of 30 kms, but I am not sure if it talks about the first resident, who backs up to the quarry boundary on Mates Road, or the 49,000 other residents who reside within 10 kms of its door. What I can say with absolute certainty is that Monaro Rock does not talk about me, my husband, my three children or my six grandchildren, who love coming out to “the farm” to swim and ride bikes and enjoy the fresh air. It does not mention how our lives will be effected each and every day by their quarry.
If this quarry goes ahead, every pro-planet decision I have made in the last 20 years - solar panels, solar hot water, electric cars, water saving shower heads, drought tolerant plants, minimal watering - will be negated a hundred-fold instantly.
Please don’t allow that to occur. Please make a decision I can be proud of to share with my children and grandchildren - a decision that proves that one voice does, actually, matter.

Road traffic during the snow season cannot support this the queues into town can already be KMs long even on a week day. The road is already falling apart from the level of truck traffic with constant patch fixed every time it rains. The impact on the animal habitat pushing them further to the road where it already has consistent accidents due to animal impact. The dust from the current quarry is enough surely another quarry with further impact air quality.

Tuggeranong already had degraded air quality issues from the mugga lane tip surely adding the quarry to this will put this further at risk.

I am concerned about the possible health ramifications from dust from the quarry.

I'm concerned about the decrease in property prices in Theodore.

The noise from blasting is concerning. The blast vibrations from the quarry may cause damage to my property.

Please do not go ahead with the quarry.

Thankyou

I have attached a statement objecting to the Monaro rock quarry project on a number of grounds.

I am based in Royalla, and I am a highly competitive horseback eventer, both my high level athlete horse and my old retiree would suffer from the issues with this Quarry, I also spend a large amount of my time outside, meaning things like mass amounts of silica dust would greatly affect my horses and my performance and health and wellbeing. The blasting and crushing would massively impact our beautiful wildlife paradise we have here in Royalla, disturbing our peaceful life, wildlife and our livestock.
I already travel 45 minutes to work on the Monaro Highway, adding up to 500 trucks a day would increase my commute time and mean i get to spend less time with my horses who need me, and more time using expensive fuel in my car.

Living so close to the proposed site i cant believe that it has gone this far through the planning process. I work in the construction industry and NEED 3 things just to get on a construction site. White card, asbestos awareness and as of recently silica awareness. An unseen killer that our construction companies must take VERY seriously on every jobsite. And righly so. How can we mine aggregate so close to where kids are still playing outside and families enjoy hiking through nature knowing how dangerous silica dust is? We learnt from asbestos mining too late for too many families. What will be the impact on the monaro highway? Too many fatalities as is let alone with alot of extra trucks getting already impatient drivers even angrier. The main thoroughfare to the ski fields which is a lovely drive will become like driving in peak hour in Sydney. I have done the lap of Australia and seen the impact of mining on many small towns. No need to ruin our paradise for a bit of rock that only benefits a couple people filling their pockets. Thankyou

I am a near neighbour to this proposed quarry, I have concerns regarding the proposed quarry being located this area.
Firstly, it is being located in an area of both productive farmland and a pristine piece of critically endangered Box Gum Grassy Woodland. This woodland is home to a wide and varied community of both flora and fauna, including but in no way limited to the following:
Endangered Flora: Small Purple Pea(Swainsona Recta), Hoary Sunray(Leucochrysum albicans subsp.)
Endangered Fauna: Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby(Petrogale penicillata), Eastern Quoll(Dasyurus viverrinus)
Secondly, it is being proposed to route the heavy vehicle movement through one of the ACT's nature reserves, the Melrose Nature Reserve. This will result in damage to the reserve itself an more significantly will result in a very large increase of heavy vehicle traffic onto one of the ACT's most congested roads, the Monaro Highway. The proposed site already has simple and cleared access to the NSW transport infrastructure via Monaro Station Road and Old Cooma Road. Utilising this access would preserve significant reaches of existing biodiversity and allow simpler access to northern NSW utilisers of the quarries proposed product.
Thirdly, this is a needless quarry, our region is already serviced by four quarries within 30Km of this site. These quarries have published resource mapping continuing for in excess of 100 years.
And finally, this quarry is paying no attention to the significant indigenous heritage known to exist within the proposed site. Both a known ring tree, used as a guidance device, and a scar tree, utilised for both product and potential spiritual significance to the local indigenous peoples, providing direct links to their ancestors and beliefs.