Residents emotional at ring road meeting

Emotions ran high at Main Roads’ community information session about Bunbury Outer Ring Road in Gelorup last week, an event residents tagged as a ‘flick and tick’ for the road body.

Designed to help the community understand the concept plan, hundreds of residents attended Thursday’s session at the Gelorup Community Centre where many rejected the plans with some even reduced to tears.

“We’re one of the affected land owners, our place is going to be affected both at the front and the back by the BORR and by the big fly over,” Jeff McDougall said.

“I’ve spoken to a few of the Main Roads people and the director himself assures us the route’s going to stay where it is.

“He says the noise modelling is being done at the moment and won’t be finalised until October, when we’ll find out if we’re going to have a big limestone wall or sand piles around our home which will end up looking like a prison.”

While Susanne Hunter’s property will not be affected by the road, she was another resident left unhappy by the information provided at the event and took issue with the environmental impact studies being conducted by Main Roads employees.

“There was one person tonight who found out their property is affected and hadn’t even been notified yet,” she said.

Robyn Walsh’s property was another listed in the firing line of the project and facing land resumption, something Mrs Walsh said was the result of almost no community engagement.

“That’s the only community concern they’ve ever listened to, was the tree (giant tuart), they’ve never listened to any other community concern,” she said.

BORR project director Dominic Boyle was on hand to shed some light on the plans at the event and insisted Main Roads was listening to the community.

“There’s obviously a few people who live very locally who have some concerns so we’re taking those concerns on board and will be considering them as part of the further project developments,” he said.

“We take on board everybody’s comments and points.”