PWCS had bought the Ellalong property from controversial developer Duncan Hardie as one of three offset properties imposed as part of the approvals for the T4 coal loader, which was formally abandoned as a project in June 2018.

The other two offsets for the Kooragang Island loader were at Tomago and Nowra.

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The new owner of the property, which settled this week, is Eden Estates, one of a number of companies associated with Terry Goldacre, a former president of the Urban Development Industry Association.

Mr Goldacre told the Newcastle Herald yesterday afternoon that he had been developing properties in the Camden area for 30 years and that Eden Estates was in the early stages of planning for the link road site, bought from coal company Glencore.

The Ellalong transfer is being watched warily by those nearby, including members of the Ellalong Residents' Wetlands Protection Group.

The group's long-time president, Roger Lewis, said the lagoon deserved greater environmental protection than it had received.

Mr Lewis said Ellalong Lagoon was included in a joint state/federal register, titled A Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia, but development was not prohibited on some of the surrounding land.

Agents Colliers sales pitch said: "The site could be acquired as a biodiversity stewardship site or alternatively, as a single large land holding with the potential for a large lot rural subdivision (subject to council approval)."

Mr Goldacre said he wanted to preserve and "enhance" the Ellalong site and to give the public more access.

Mr Lewis said PWCS had made similar promises but had effectively kept the site locked up and "largely ignored local community groups".

PWCS said Birdlife Australia had done regular biodiversity surveys of the site.

Mr Lewis said people in the area had fought to preserve the lagoon and its surrounding area since the 1990s, when Duncan Hardie and his Hardie Holdings group bought the surface holdings of various old Hunter underground mine sites, much of it from Coal & Allied.

Many of the entrepreneurial developer's plans were scuttled, but Huntlee Estate, under different ownership, went ahead.

In 2011, the Herald reported Mr Hardie had returned to his home country, New Zealand, and was selling down his holdings in the Hunter and Gunnedah, estimated at 10,000 hectares.

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