No certainty about Pulp Mill permits’ validity

The pulp mill site: Ready for …?

Community groups Friends of the Tamar Valley and Pulp the Mill today reminded Gunns’ administrators and receivers, KordaMentha and PPB Advisory, and any parties expressing an interest in purchasing the permits for the proposed pulp mill, that the validity of the permits remains the subject of a legal challenge in Tasmania’s Supreme Court.

Tasmanian Conservation Trust argue that compliance with the ‘substantial completion’ clause on the State Government water permit had failed to take place before it expired on 31 July 2011. TCT also disputes building work on the pulp mill site had ‘substantially commenced’ before 31 August 2011, as required by the State Government building permit, when earth moving machinery was only taken there the day before.

No date has been set for the first Supreme Court hearing.

Community opposition to Gunns’ controversial pulp mill project has been ongoing since it was first proposed by Gunns in 2004.Both FTV and PtM said the collapse of Gunns will not signal an end to pulp mill opposition.

“Community opposition to the pulp mill has been entrenched and ongoing for the last eight years, and it certainly won’t cease because Gunns has collapsed,” said the groups’ spokesperson Stephani Taylor.

“There is still a court challenge to be faced on the validity of the permits, and any investor willing to gamble millions on permits whose value is likely to be deemed legally worthless, would be reckless in the extreme,” Ms Taylor concluded.

• ABC Radio is reporting that Forestry Tasmania Spinner Ken Jeffreys will resign this morning as FT’s Comunications Director … Mark’s view, here

• Wood Resource Quarterly: WRQ reports that domestic sawlog prices in Russia have gone up 25% in three years, despite higher log export tariffs; will they climb even higher now that Russia is a member of WTO?

Log costs for Russian sawmills did not fall as the Russian government intended when it implemented a 25 percent log export tariff in 2008. Instead, sawlog prices have increased by 24 percent the past three years and the supply of logs has been tight in 2012, as reported by the Wood Resource Quarterly.

Download the full article:
GTWMU_Russia_log_exports_and_sawlog_prices_3Q_2012.pdf