Holcim own and operate the Nickol Bay hard rock quarry which is located at the southern end of the Burrup Peninsula between the towns of Dampier and Karratha in north Western Australia.  Ecoscape undertook a Visual Impact Assessment (VIA) of two components of their quarry as the environment has been deemed significant by the state and federal government.  The VIA was to be submitted to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) and federal Department of Environment (DoE) for approval.

The visual assessment followed the Western Australian Planning Commission’s methodology outlined in “Visual Landscape Planning in Western Australia – a manual for evaluation, assessment, siting and design”. The assessment defined the landscape character, key view locations and landscape values within the study area and identified visual management objectives to manage the visual landscape values identified.

To demonstrate the visual impacts to the surrounding landscape a viewshed analysis was done in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to identify the areas which may have views to the quarry.  Within these areas photo montages were prepared to illustrate the potential change to the landscape. The photo montages showed several different options which were each assessed for visual impacts.