00:02Just 15 minutes from the Belconnen Town Centre, the Travascas family's farm feels a world
00:08away from the rat race.
00:10It's paradise.
00:11You couldn't get any better.
00:12We've got suburbia just over the hill there, but when you're here you think you're out
00:16in the country.
00:17Brendan fears a proposal for a permanent green waste facility on steep neighbouring slopes
00:22threatens creeks feeding them along Low River, critical to his mum and dad's burrino wool
00:27business.
00:28We're worrying about the water getting contaminated, whether it's leaching from the compost, whether
00:35it's weed contamination as well too.
00:39The ACT Government needs to move its existing green waste and landscape supplies facility
00:44in West Belconnen to make way for rapidly expanding suburbs.
00:48It's proposed planning law changes to allow an already approved temporary facility on a
00:53former vineyard known as Block 1653, just south of Strathnown and Holt, to be made permanent.
01:00It has been significantly impacted by agriculture in the past.
01:05So we know that it has some of those environmental values are not as strong as other sites.
01:11The Government insists steps will be taken to avoid contamination.
01:15So all runoff is retained in leachate dams and then is reused back on site.
01:20So no material under our approvals is permitted to actually get into the river corridor.
01:26When you're a farmer you know what the ground does and whether it holds water, whether it
01:32runoff and things like that.
01:33So we didn't go to school to learn that.
01:36You learn that from living on the land.
01:38So I'm hoping that they will listen to some of the things that we have to say and work
01:44with us.
01:45The Government is accepting feedback on its proposal until August 3.
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