GEORGE NEWS - Roughly more than half of the area around the Garden Route Dam will be retained as a nature zone when development of this prime 120 hectares of land is to take place in the future.

This is according to Stiaan Carstens, deputy director of Planning at the George Municipality. Carstens said the municipality is in the process of obtaining environmental approval from the Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning (DEA&DP) for the future development of the land. An application will thereafter be lodged for rezoning from undetermined to residential, business, and public open space.

The development is to involve the following:

• 163 single residential erven with an average size of about 830 m²;
• two group housing units with a density of 20 units per hectare on 11 ha;
• one town housing component covering 4.76 ha (30 units/ha);
• two components of social housing with a coverage of about 4,25 ha;
• one component of business zoning which is proposed to be a waterfront area with a coverage of about 3.8 ha.

According to Carstens, the residential component will be restricted to the section located roughly between the Saasveld road and the current access road to the dam.

Waterfront hotel
According to the municipality’s application document, the proposed commercial waterfront development will be situated within 32 metres of the edge of the dam and therefore its construction will be a listed activity in terms of environmental legislation. The development includes a hotel on the water’s edge. There will also be a boardwalk, walking/cycling routes, slipways and jetties. These and the hotel fall within the boundaries of the Katrivier Nature Reserve.

Exemption from EIA
The municipality is applying for exemption from the full scoping and environmental impact process and to be allowed to do a basic assessment only. It motivates its request based on the fact that a previous environmental application for development of the land was submitted in 2006. A full scoping and environmental impact assessment process was then followed, which included an adequate public participation process, it says in the application. Furthermore, the new proposal does not involve major changes to the original one.

Public still to comment
The basic assessment process will involve amongst others submitting the application for environmental approval to Environmental Affairs and compiling a basic assessment report which will be made available for public review and comment for a period of 40 days.

ARTICLE: ALIDA DE BEER, GEORGE HERALD JOURNALIST