Unanimous approval for the Witchcliffe Ecovillage

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Augusta-Margaret River Council gives unanimous approval to Witchcliffe Ecovillage

We are very excited to announce the news that the Shire of Augusta Margaret River has voted unanimously to approve the Witchcliffe Ecovillage Scheme Amendment and Structure Plan!  We couldn’t imagine a better place in the world to build a model of how sustainable an ecovillage can be, and it’s a wonderful feeling to know how much support we have behind us from our local Councilors and Shire staff, as well as the local community. To celebrate, we headed out to Settlers’ Tavern in Margaret River with the team and some keen supporters and enjoyed a couple of bottles of Cullen Estate’s beautiful biodynamic wine.

It is certainly a great relief after 6 years of planning and working our way through the statutory process to finally have the green light from the Council to proceed to the next stage. The Structure Plan and Scheme Amendment have now been forwarded to the West Australian Planning Commission for approval, and we hope this will be achieved early in 2017. With this level of certainty achieved at last, we can now start work with confidence on the many other documents needed for subdivision approval, like the Sustainable Building Design Guidelines, the ERA approval of the waste water treatment system, detailed landscape plans, strata by-laws, Ecovillage covenants, etc.

It’s going to be another busy and exciting year for the Ecovillage team!