By KATH GANNAWAY
A GROUP of Millgrove residents is hoping the heritage status of the Millgrove sawmill site will save it from a Telstra telecommunication tower, they say, will degrade the area.
Telstra has applied to Yarra Ranges Council to erect the 40metre monopole as base station on the Premier Timber Milling site, formerly known as Inverarity Mill.
The site has a Heritage Overlay under Yarra Ranges Council’s planning scheme which rates the mill as having “ … high local significance as an example of a post-Second World War working mill”.
Sheila Goodwin, Margaret Lane and Brendan Partel are among a number of local residents who say, while they do not object to the tower as such, they are opposed to the site on the highway and adjacent to parkland, the primary school and the shopping centre, which, they say, will be detrimental to the town and the surrounding residential area.
Ms Goodwin said the site had a Heritage Overlay and was a picturesque place of significant historic importance to the town with a working mill that had been in operation for over 50 years.
“If the proposed Telstra 40metre monopole is erected there, it will permanently and negatively dominate the centre of town, degrade the area and affect the views to the mountains beyond the mill,” she said.
“It has no place in this location.”
Mr Partel said there was also concern that digging works needed to be done to erect the tower that would affect a number of established trees with a Significant Vegetation Overlay also relevant to the site.
The group will present a petition with 136 signatures, objecting to the tower on the mill site to Yarra Ranges Council on Tuesday (tonight) and have lobbied councillors to support their concerns and refuse the permit.
Owner of the site, Marion Dennis, said she believed the Heritage Overlay was about keeping the mill site as an example of the old sawmills of the past.
She said Telstra had approached her because the site offered good coverage and although they realised the proposal was contentious with some people in the community, they had decided to leave the matter to go through the process.
“It’s a good thing that people have the chance to comment, and we decided to leave it between the people who might object, those who might support it, the shire and Telstra,” she said.
Submissions can be made to the council up to the time the planning application is heard by council. No date has been set as yet for that hearing.
