A controversial proposal for an artificial wave park on Perth's Swan River has cleared another administrative hurdle, but residents concerned about environmental and amenity issues have vowed to continue a fight against the development.

The City of Melville last night voted 7-4 in favour of giving Wave Park Group conditional approval to conduct a feasibility study to build the facility on 4 hectares of Tompkin Park, in Alfred Cove.

Wave Park Group chief executive Andrew Ross said he was delighted with the decision, and work on the feasibility study would take six to eight months before a development application could be submitted.

"It gives us the opportunity now to commence all the detailed technical studies and design work that we need to undertake, in order to demonstrate the feasibility of the project," he said.

"All of that work will support a development application which we will seek to lodge with the State Government later this year.

"To date all that has been said [against the park] and the negative impacts it will have on the environment is just unsubstantiated opinion.

"We will now be able to go through the process of answering all those questions and providing the community certainty that this is the right project, at the right time at the right location."

Park 'will resemble sewerage treatment works'

Alfred Cove Action Group spokesman David Maynier said many residents were strongly opposed to the development.

"This is a terrible outcome. This is the worst possible place to put a facility like this," he said.

"It will be bigger than Subiaco Oval with 2-metre high walls and from the outside it will resemble a sewage treatment works.

"The City of Melville has progressed this with undue haste in highly questionable circumstances and in defiance of protests of a huge number of ratepayers.

"The council is in the process of all but gifting a beautiful parkland on the Swan River to private developers for 50 years, we will never get it back.

"It's on fragile remediated land that was once a rubbish tip and it's hard up against (a) precious conservation estate and a bird sanctuary of international significance. It's an environmental catastrophe."

Mr Maynier said his group would be working hard to stop the project from getting the green light and would be pressuring the State Government to override the council.

However, Mr Ross said he was confident the project would be approved.

"The vast majority of residents are in favour of this project," he said.

"It's only a handful of near neighbours that have provided some opposition, but we are hopeful we will win them over once they see the facts associated with the development."

Mr Ross said the surfing lagoon would be built over 2 hectares, or the size of an AFL oval, but space for public parking would extend the overall development to 4 hectares.