CROWN land issues are holding up a new fire station west of the Hawkesbury River, Member for Hawkesbury Dominic Perrottet has confirmed.
While there are Rural Fire Service brigades west of the Hawkesbury River, there is not a police, urban fire or ambulance station, with emergency service vehicles being forced to cross either North Richmond or Windsor bridges to attend emergencies.
Mr Perrottet has told The Gazette the state government is working to toward getting a new station, however, problems with Crown land had slowed the work to a crawl.
“The process has been ridiculous in terms of the time it has taken to process a whole lot f these Crown land issues,” Mr Perrottet said.
“We need to get on with it.”
Mr Perrottet said it was almost farcical that down the road at the Richmond RAAF Base, there were state of the art water bombers that could fight fires anywhere in the state, but there was no fire station to service North Richmond and its neighbouring suburbs.
“The reality is, we need to make sure that wherever you live, that there is enough resources available and we have fire stations as close as possible to families,” he said.
“We have to get the appropriate locations for these to be based, and unfortunately, we've had this Crown land situation, that has completely slowed down the process.”
Recently, Council and the state government resolved Crown lands issues surrounding new Rural Fire Service stations at Freemans Reach and Wilberforce.
Work began to find a suitable site at Freemans Reach in 2007, while at Wilberforce, it began in 2010.
Mr Perrottet said negotiating issues with Crown land was complex work, and was never easy, but was pushing for the case to be completed as quickly as possible.
