Posted on August 28, 2017
By Chris Calcino, Cairns Post
A FIGHT is brewing between Cairns Regional Council and the State Government over who should bear the cost if something goes wrong with the dumping of dredge spoils from Trinity Inlet.
In the revised draft environmental impact statement for the Cairns Shipping Development Project the council would be responsible for about 5km of pipelines delivering dredge waste to Holloways Beach.
But Mayor Bob Manning told the Cairns Post that ratepayers should not be held accountable if the State Government’s plan sprung a leak.
The draft EIS lists the council as “assessment manager” for all development within the local government area.
The designation would confer responsibility to the council for approving the placement of about 5km of on-land pipelines delivering dredge waste from the shore to the Northern Sands quarry at Holloways Beach, as well as a pipeline returning processed water to the Barron River.
“The people of this city shouldn’t have to bear any risk in this,” Cr Manning said. “The concerns here might be that, in what we term the downstream proposals, that something slips through the cracks.”
Treasurer Curtis Pitt said Cr Manning had been one of the project’s strongest advocates, so his “eleventh hour backflip” was both surprising and disappointing.
“I have full faith in council’s officers to professionally deliver this technical work but the mayor’s comment that ‘something might slip through the cracks’ if council acts as the assessment manager is particularly alarming,” he said.
The dredge line would generally run along existing cane farm headlands, passing under the Captain Cook Hwy through existing drainage culverts and crossing Richters Creek to deliver 900,000 cubic metres of soft clay to Northern Sands.
About 100,000 cubic metres of stiff clay would be sent by barge to Ports North-owned land at Tingira St in Portsmith, to be used as landfill for future industrial development.
Cr Manning said the Palaszczuk government should handle the process from start to finish, including the controversial business of dumping dredge spoils.
“The port authority is a government instrumentality, it is a State Government project and the referral agencies will be State Government departments,” he said.
“This is a matter that should be done by the government and co-ordinated through government departments.
“We don’t even know how many downstream approvals there are.
“They’ve got the dredging approval, but there has to be dredge lines put in, they’ve got to go across a lot of land, they have to cross over rivers and creeks, under highways.
“Then there will be matters of the discharge of water into the Barron River.”
He said further environmental impact studies would likely be required before the pipeline could be established.
“We’re going to have to go and get all the approvals,” he said.
“We’re not experienced in this and we’re not experienced in dealing with multiple agencies.
“It makes a whole lot more sense that somebody within the government, with the necessary power and authority, is in that role as opposed to us.
“That is safer for them, safer for us, safer for the proponent.”
Mr Pitt said he understood the council was very well-resourced and regularly dealt with these kinds of assessments.
“If that’s not the case, this might be a wake-up call to council that they need to hire to acquire these skills in-house or potentially look at outsourcing,” he said.
Source: Cairns Post
