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Water - National News - February 2008 |
Australian Capital Territory; New South Wales; Northern Territory; Queensland; South Australia; Tasmania; Victoria; Western Australia
Water State 26/02/08 The Snowy – some light at the end of the tunnel? Juliet Le Feuvre, Environment Victoria East Gippsland and Goolengook
04/02/08 Marine environment left unprotected by weak laws, By Chris Smyth ACF , http://www.sciencealert.com.au/
04/02/08 Port body still facing two clean-up orders Adam Morton, The Age our highlighting links
Marine environment left unprotected by weak laws
Monday, 04 February 2008 By Chris Smyth
When reports surfaced recently of lesions on flathead caught in Port Phillip Bay, alarm bells rang yet again for the health of the bay. As Melbourne’s recreational playground, signs of a sick Port Phillip Bay are a big issue for millions of people - and the marine life that depends on a healthy bay.
With the Port of Melbourne’s channel deepening project due to begin within weeks, the bay’s health is set to get a lot worse.
Dredging toxic sediment from the north of the bay, the legacy of years of industrial pollution of the Yarra River, then dumping it back into the bay, is hardly a cure for the bay’s ills.
Digging up the rocks at The Heads, the site of unique sponge gardens, will not improve the bay’s health. It is difficult to predict precisely what impact the associated increase in tidal flows will have on wetlands, beaches and coastal infrastructure, but it is certain to add to the pressures already being felt by coastal development and climate change.
Spurting sediments out the back of a very large dredge could significantly reduce light to seagrass meadows, the nurseries for commercial and recreational fish, and undermine the economic viability of the bay’s fishing industry.
The cumulative effect of these and other likely impacts could see the bay’s vital signs flatline. Maintaining Port Phillip Bay’s health should be more about prevention than cure, but our planning and management frameworks are ad hoc, disintegrated and narrow. What is needed is a far stronger set of environmental laws that have marine protection and sustainable marine planning, management and use as their main purpose.
If our environmental laws were better, projects like channel deepening would be more vigorously and rigorously assessed and monitored against a broader set of principles and objectives that considered all values, uses and users.
Over the past 200 years, Australia’s oceans laws have developed into a patchwork of statutory and regulatory measures attempting to manage the activities of particular sectors such as fishing, shipping and the gas and oil industries as they have emerged.
This patchwork is inadequate for resolving many marine problems - overfishing, climate change, habitat loss and damage, water pollution, introduced pests - that demand an integrated and national response.
An Australian Oceans Act would provide a better foundation and process for integrated, ecosystem-based regional marine planning and protection across State and Commonwealth waters. It would also provide transparency, consistency, certainty and security for the community and industries that rely on healthy oceans - like commercial fishing and tourism - and drive improvements in other laws.
One of those laws is the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, (EPBC Act), which is in urgent need of an overhaul because it is not protecting Australia’s irreplaceable wildlife and ecosystems.
When Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett assessed channel deepening under its provisions, he probably saw his options were limited. However, to protect the bay’s marine life from the project’s worst impacts, and help satisfy our international biodiversity obligations, he could have more comprehensively utilised the Act’s provisions and set more stringent conditions for use in the environment management plan.
Marine protection is limited under the EPBC Act because its focus is on a narrow range of species and communities, rather than on whole marine ecosystems - such as Port Phillip Bay - and its influence is further diminished because the bay falls within Victorian jurisdiction.
The Act is also reactive, waiting for proposals such as channel deepening to be referred and then assessed. Long-term advance planning for sustainable use is impossible.
Reform of the EPBC Act should be one of Minister Garrett’s early priorities. Its coverage should be extended to include consideration of climate change and other matters of national environmental significance. It needs stronger accountability and assessment standards, improved resources for implementation and enforcement and more effective arrangements for third party enforcement of the Act.
The Queen of the Netherlands lies idle at South Wharf yesterday.
Photo: Wayne Taylor
Adam Morton, The Age our highlighting
February 4, 2008
THE Port of Melbourne Corporation has had two orders demanding it clean up pollution that potentially poses a risk to human health hanging over it since the start of last year.
Both clean-up notices were served by the Environment Protection Authority in January 2007, before the Federal Government approved the port as having a suitable environmental track record to protect endangered species and internationally listed wetlands.
One notice is for a controversial Yarraville industrial site, formerly owned by fertilising company Pivot, which the port bought six years ago without assessing the potential risks caused by more than 150 years of chemical production. The Age revealed in August 2005 that the port allowed arsenic from the site to leach into the Maribyrnong River for four years.
The other is for Holden Dock, where groundwater is contaminated with petroleum and chlorinated hydrocarbons, which are often used in cleaning agents.
Lawyers for the anti-dredging Blue Wedges Coalition will argue that the Federal Government should have taken the notices into account when ruling the port could protect matters of national environmental significance during channel deepening.
In his reasons for approving dredging, federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett found the port was suited to manage the project, having not been convicted or fined for environmental breaches.
Blue Wedges' barrister Fiona McLeod, SC, said the Federal Court bid on February 20 would challenge Mr Garrett's failure to look into the port's environmental history, including rock falls on to coral beds during trial dredging and the EPA notices.
Federal legislation appears to leave open the question of whether he should have — the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act says the minister "may consider" environmental history when making a decision.
Mr Garrett's office refused to say whether the EPA notices were considered.
Port chief executive Stephen Bradford said both contaminated sites were being dealt with. He said the port itself reported the pollution at Holden Dock to the EPA after becoming concerned about the state of groundwater at the site. Several sites along the Maribyrnong had had similar notices.
Remediation plans are yet to be finalised for either Yarraville site after the EPA allowed the port extra time to test on neighbouring properties.
"A significant proportion of the land owned by the Port of Melbourne is contaminated. That is not a state secret. That is because of the inappropriate nature of the way our predecessors put fill in the land," Mr Bradford said.
The former Pivot property, which cost the port $13.5 million and was last year worth just $500,000, is one of the most contaminated pieces of real estate in Victoria, polluted with arsenic, copper, lead and sulphur. A scathing report by the Victorian Auditor General last year found it will cost up to $70 million to rehabilitate the area.
Mr Bradford said the port planned to level and cap the contaminated former Pivot land and separate it from the river with a retaining wall.
"I think the community in Maribyrnong will be proud of our ultimate development," he said.
He said the contaminated groundwater at Holden Dock would either be removed or monitored to make sure it did not reach the river.
The Port of Melbourne is a government-owned corporation that is self-funded and gains revenue from charges for port handling and services.
Hanford Toxic Dump site - and the Columbia River - US experience with contaminants and prevention of movement through groundwater
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.- Hanford Site