Tony Saddington
DOWN south, in Tasmania, half an hour from Launceston, lies the beautiful Tamar river valley, home to 10,000 people.
In this valley, there are plans in place by Gunns Ltd to build the biggest wood pulp mill in the Southern hemisphere. Five tonnes of plantation and native forest will be consumed annually.
Fresh drinking water, 3 million litres an hour, 75 million litres a day will be consumed by the mill and the effluent pumped into Bass Strait.
During the Spring of 2007 through to Autumn 2008, the TAP, (Tasmanians Against the Pulp mill), research team catalogued roadkill daily along the East Tamar Highway over 6 months. More than 800 photos were taken and roadkill mapped, using, GPS.
Gunns were supposed to do the same as part of the promised ‘rigorous assessment process’. The Chief Scientist, Jim Peacock, stipulated that Gunns must monitor roadkill for the “East Tamar highway and other major access routes for construction”.
Only portions of the East Tamar Hwy were monitored by Gunns despite there being four other access routes to the mill site. No other route was monitored for roadkill and populations of threatened species largely unrecorded.
No endangered species such as the Tasmanian Devil or the threatened Masked Owl were documented by Gunns. Examples were found by TAP, missed by Gunns.
Peter Garrett nonetheless approved the module and issued the permit, despite being advised of flaws in March and again in April.
Apparently the bar was set too high for Gunns to comply, the task of locating and mapping threatened species too difficult. Not impossible, just time consuming and difficult.
Garrett has instead replaced the Chief Scientists’ conditions with an easier self regulatory ‘zero tolerance’ and limiting roadkill reports to the mill site area.
Gunns claims that they have met all of the permit requirements. I refer readers to Gunn’s pulp mill website, and to read EIMP module C page 53. and judge for themselves.
If a permit can be so easily obtained, how thorough is the Federal approval process? How much scrutiny has other permits received?
How now will wildlife kills be reliably monitored? A ‘self regulating’ system is prone to inefficiencies and inaccuracies.
Tony Saddington (TAP)
Dilston. Launceston Tas 7252.
From Christine Milne
Peter Garrett has signed off on the road kill element of the Gunns Pulp Mill’s Environmental Impact Management Plan despite the process and data being fatally flawed, missing numerous animals including three Tasmanian devils.
Despite the Chief Scientist’s clear requirement for 3 months of daily monitoring of all five routes to the proposed pulp mill, Gunns only monitored part of two routes for 24 days. Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill (TAP) have conducted more complete monitoring on one of the routes, recording many more animals, including several threatened species.
Senator Milne said “The more detailed monitoring of road kill around the pulp mill site has found a tragic toll including three Tasmanian devils, five spotted tailed quolls, seven eastern barred bandicoots and a masked owl. It is horrible to contemplate how many more threatened animals would be killed if the mill were built, with log trucks hurtling down every route, every day.
“These appalling revelations about road kill around the pulp mill site make a mockery of Peter Garrett’s assurances that he would only sign off each environmental assessment module once it fully addressed the approval conditions.
“Gunns’ road kill monitoring utterly failed to meet the requirements of the Chief Scientist and the approval conditions, and yet Peter Garrett has signed off on it.
“This raises very serious questions about the other three modules of the Environmental Impact Management Plan that Mr Garrett has already signed off on, as well as the remaining 12 modules that he recently gave Gunns five extra months to complete.
“If Gunns cannot be trusted to properly complete a basic road kill survey, and Mr Garrett cannot be trusted to require it, how can either be trusted on issues as complex as toxic effluent mixing in Bass Strait?”
Deficiencies in Gunns’ survey
• Gunns’ consultant surveyed on only 24 days of the 90 days recommended by the Chief Scientist, i.e. the survey was grossly incomplete. For time, data is incomplete for 73% of the recommended three-month daily monitoring program.
• Three EPBC listed species were recorded by TAP but only two by Gunns. Gunns’ consultants did not record the Tasmanian devil. This may have been a reflection of their inadequate survey methodology.
• There is no survey data for any of the “major roads associated with construction, commissioning and operation” as required by the Chief Scientist. Major roads omitted from Gunns’ data include West Tamar Highway, Batman Bridge and the George Town approach and the Bridport Highway.
Also view The Australian article: Gunns gets extra nod despite failure
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24404231-5006788,00.html
