It is appropriate for Les Rochester (In Their Own Words, General, scroll down) (In Their Own Words, General) to query the accuracy of information being disseminated regarding the proposed pulp mill at Longreach.
His concerns relate to issues of public health and amenity.
But health and environmental problems relating to the mill’s operation are only part of the story.
A pulp mill this size will have an enormous appetite for wood and thirst for water.
The supply of the required quanties of pulpwood for this mill will mean a continuation of the current regime of industrial plantation development which is seeing broadacre conversion of our farmland and native forest.
I find it hard to believe that “only steam will come from the stack”.
I have been told that young men involved in establishing plantations have been “informed” that triazine chemicals (atrazine and simazine) are “as safe as sea-water” and “you could shower it”.
Of course, let’s add value to the Tasmanian timber harvest but also let’s count the real cost before proceeding.
Dr Frank Nicklason is a specialist physician at the Royal Hobart Hospital
And,
Peter Cundal in the Oz, TRAC website
And,
on chemicals:
Data Quality law hinders atrazine regulation, The Washington Post
Dave Groves
June 20, 2005 at 01:38
Bob Gordon, the head of the “Pulp Mill Task Force”, said that only 10% of woodchips came from plantation at present.
John Gay boasts that he will be “harvesting” 7 million tonnes per year.
Easy to see that is a lot of our native forest travelling to the chipper.
With the news that Gunns Ltd will require up to 650 hectares (the size of Gibraltar, which has a population of around 30,000) of heavy industrial land for the proposed pulp mill development, the general public must now have some idea as to the scale of industrial logging in Tasmania.
Is this what Tasmanians and our burgeoning tourist economy really want to see?
David Mohr
June 20, 2005 at 08:29
What is going on in this state?
Concerned groups of people have taken many hours to prepare submissions for the RPDC and on the very day these submissions are due Gunns reveals it has made changes to its proposal!
One hundred hectares becomes six hundred and fifty! New ports are to be built. More native forest is required than what was originally stated.
This pulp mill proposal is a fraud. How can people trust this process? The vision of Northern Tasmania as a giant tree farm with token “pockets” of protected native forest and productive farm land and a polluting, water guzzling, smelly pulp mill is one that is totally abhorrent.