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Stanley Road: Dozens of trees will be removed for the road works.
By Catherine Watson
PLANNING Minister Sonya Kilkenny has approved an application by Heidelberg Australia to widen Stanley Road in Grantville for sand trucks to service a new quarry at the end of the road.
The permit allows the company to remove 0.738ha of roadside vegetation, including four large trees. Several dozen additional mature trees will be removed as part of the works, along with other vegetation.
The original permit for the Stanley Road quarry, granted by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) in 1996, required the company to use Stanley Road for its sand trucks and to widen and seal the road to the council’s satisfaction.
In February 2025 Bass Coast councillors voted 8-1 to reject the application by Heidelberg (then Hanson) to remove 1.7 hectares of significant vegetation from Stanley Road including 37 large trees.
Councillors argued that clearing of native vegetation was incompatible with the council’s legal obligations and current community thinking. The road itself is a busy wildlife corridor and it also contains significant vegetation.
The quarry site has remained dormant until now but in late 2025 residents of the Adams Estate, off Stanley Road, were notified of plans for the road widening. Many had been unaware that the road was a planned sand truck route.
Heidelberg’s application drew 58 objections from residents, the wider community and conservation groups including the Westernport Biosphere, Gippsland Threatened Species Action Group, South Gippsland Conservation Society, Phillip Island Conservation Society, Victorian National Parks Association and Save Western Port Woodlands.
Heidelberg appealed against the council’s decision in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal and the Planning Minister later called in the application citing the state significance of the sand resource.
In May this year a three-person Standing Advisory Committee considered submissions from Heidelberg, the council, residents of the Adams Estate and conservation groups.
"The Bass Coast Statement of Planning Policy clearly articulates the policy tension between protecting biodiversity and the realisation of significant sand resources in the Western Port Woodlands area.”
The committee’s report states it had to find a balance between the policy imperatives of sand extraction and the protection of biodiversity.
“The Planning Scheme clearly provides policy support for the protection of biodiversity, including native vegetation and important habitat in roadsides. It also refers to consolidating and linking existing fragmented biodiversity habitat areas. However, that support is not absolute.
“The Planning Scheme also provides considerable policy support for economic development and sand extraction. But again, that policy support is not absolute. Resource extraction may only take place if appropriate environmental standards are achieved.
“The Bass Coast SPP clearly articulates the policy tension between protecting biodiversity and the realisation of significant sand resources in the Western Port Woodlands area ...
"There is no ‘magic formula’ for this. What must be demonstrated is that the benefits outweigh the disbenefits. The Committee must assess this on the material before it, even where there is inconclusive evidence and conflicting submissions.
“The sand resource is identified as a resource of state significance and is needed to service Melbourne’s construction industry and support the provision of more housing in the context of the gradual decline of sand deposits located within Metropolitan Melbourne. The Quarry Permit was subject to the earlier VCAT proceeding that investigated many alternative access routes to the Quarry and determined Stanley Road was appropriate …
“The Committee accepts that to realise the sand resource, the roadworks must occur and native vegetation will be lost. It is satisfied, subject to the Committee’s recommended permit conditions, biodiversity will be protected as required by Clause 12.01 and Clause 52.17 of the Planning Scheme. The removal of native vegetation has been avoided and minimised to the extent practicable without undermining the objective of the proposal.
“The Committee has given weight to the fact the project footprint sits within the broad area of the Western Port Woodlands, a mosaic of fragmented areas of high biodiversity value. It is located adjacent to native vegetation that directly links to the Grantville Nature Conservation Reserve and the Grantville Landfill site. The biodiversity experts all agreed the road reserve contained significant habitat values.
Part of the plan indicating trees to be removed for the road works.
“The Committee has considered the above benefits and disbenefits across a range of relevant ‘communities’: the local residents including the Adams Estate, community conservation groups, the local community and the broader community across the region and Melbourne, both now and into the future. It has also considered the intrinsic rights of biodiversity to exist and flourish. It accepts the benefits and disbenefits of the removal of vegetation will be experienced unevenly across the various affected communities.
“Overall, the Committee is satisfied the proposal will achieve net community benefit and support sustainable development, consistent with the Victorian planning objectives and Clause 71.02-3 of the Planning Scheme.”
The permit conditions state that given the presence of protected species in Stanley and McGrady Roads, the company may be required to get permits under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999 and Victoria’s Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988.
A qualified zoologist must also be on hand to “catch and manage” any native fauna living or nesting in vegetation to be removed. Any hollow bearing trees that are felled must be retained for conservation purposes and placed in suitable areas of habitat nearby.
The permit will lapse if Heidelberg does not begin the vegetation removal within two years or finish it within four.
The company may have its hands full, with an existing proposal to open a major new quarry at Lang Lang, adjacent to its existing quarry. It also recently acquired the Dandy Premix quarry in Grantville from the Maas Group.
That will be effected, does that include ants?
They have no more consideration or compensation than the bees
No bees no food.
As David Attenborough says, "It is time to act now, not wring our hands when our biodiversity is so severely compromised it no longer can support flora or fauna, including human life, and it is too late to save it from catastrophe."
He urges us to look at our current lifestyles and says we have to educate our children on the way Nature works. We have to realise plants are an integral part of our existence. "[Future generations] will look back on our generation with absolute horror," he says. "We are walking a tragic road of extinction."
The community input did indeed reduce by a few the large trees that will be removed but massive damage to the ecology just in from those trees will be significantly impacted and nobody cares. The image in this article for example shows farmland on the north side of Stanley Rd. This is a water catchment for significant wet forest further down the road. The road's construction will pipe this increasingly desperately needed water away to the Bass Highway and Western Port. Bad luck for the threatened Southern Toadlet agreed to be there, and the myriad of plants and wildlife that rely on that wet ecosystem. The proponent and planning panel didn't even know this ecosystem existed there before we informed them, but could it be considered, no. A three step process to 'avoid', 'minimise' and then offset the trees to be removed just for an arbitrary distance beside the road was all that was considered.
Simple suggestions to incorporate into the road design to avoid the worst of the damage beyond the road did not need to be addressed, in this process or any further design before the road is constructed. Perhaps our council might be able to make suggestions to the proponent but there is just no requirement from the government to look at the whole picture, just a feel good attempt to minimise large trees alone, in close proximity to the road.
The panel hearing our concerns didn't make any suggestions for anything other than the material a footpath might be made from.
Worth remembering too that the permit was given for this quarry nearly thirty years ago, there was no requirement to review the conditions in the light of today's knowledge and the changed conditions or availability of sand elsewhere.
No wonder then that death by a thousand cuts continues, and continues.
The decision is heartbreaking and gut-wrenching for its utter disregard of the experts that recognise the Western Port Woodlands are of national significance, the disregard for the people who have advocated so hard for the woodlands over so many years, the disregard for the Government’s own conclusion in the Bass Coast SPP that the woodlands is an area of “outstanding environmental significance” and the utter disregard for the “big picture”.
It is even more of a slap in the face that the Government has identified Strategic Extractive Resource Areas (SERAs) at Lang Lang and Trafalgar where there are decades of sand under cleared land closer to Melbourne that cut transport costs, minimise carbon footprint and don’t cut further into the irreplaceable Western Port Woodlands.
We can now only hope that Heidelberg does the right thing and like Holcim walks away from this small quarry to focus its efforts on the major new quarry at Lang Lang adjacent to its existing quarry.
We can write to Minister Kilkenny (sonya.kilkenny@parliament.vic.gov.au) to urge her to make this the last cut in the Western Port Woodlands and to protect the woodlands NOW before the election by:
1. Approving an Environmental Significance Overlay over the Western Port Woodlands and
2. Removing the extractive industry overlay from the Western Port Woodlands
My heart goes out to all the people who fought so hard to stop this.
The hypocrisy knows no bounds…So, I have committed to losing more valuable gin drinking time in order to present some facts; so please allow me to elucidate....
1.0 Any semblance of a wildlife corridor has pretty much been flushed down the toilet with multiple landowners clearing all vegetation abutting Stanley Road. In case you don't live in the area (as I do), please refer to the attached photos.
Mmmmmm… Not much wildlife corridor here.
2.0 I haven't seen any howls of protest when Stanley Road residents have undertaken the wholesale destruction of native vegetation on their own properties under the direct supervision of the BSCS. Photos attached.
3.0 I haven't seen any howls of protest when developers have undertaken the wholesale destruction of native vegetation 250 metres from Stanley Road for a residential subdivision under the direct supervision of the BSCS. Photos attached.
4.0 Heidelberg materials submitted plans to the BCSC to minimise any loss of vegetation; Why? because there are 6 separate State and Federal Government Acts as well as the State Strategy that protects environmentally sensitive areas and mandates the requirement to minimise any vegetation clearing. The proposed road alignment was knocked back by the BCSC on 5 separate occasions. In the end, Heidelberg went to the Minister to achieve the approval for a road with the lowest impact. This is a Victory for all people that live in houses, have children in schools, which use hospitals, that drive fossil fuel burning cars (Neil Rankin) on roads that are all built with sand quarried from the Westernport Region...
Robbie Viglietti
'The permit will lapse if Heidelberg does not begin the vegetation removal within two years or finish it in four.'
All we need to do is block off Stanley Rd to non-residents for two years and bam, problem solved.
'The permit will lapse if Heidelberg does not begin the vegetation removal within two years or finish it in four.'
All we need to do is block off Stanley Rd to non-residents for two years and bam, problem solved.