Posted on February 8, 2018
By Ashleigh Pisani, AdelaideNow
It was dismissed by the Environmental Protection Authority as being “unacceptable”, but SA Best candidate Gary Johanson says he has found a way to make his alternative to Flinders Ports’ plan to dredge the Port River a viable option.
Last week, the EPA said Mr Johanson’s plan to relocate the 1.55 million cubic metres of spoil that would be dredged as part of Flinders Ports’ proposal to widen the existing shipping channel at Outer Harbor onto land at Gillman would be more damaging to the environment than dumping it in Gulf St Vincent.
The EPA said doing so would require an 8km pipe to be built through mangroves and the “risk of pipe breakage and the flow of spoil into the environment is considered to be an unacceptable alternative”.
However, Mr Johanson this week said he had found a company that could transport the dredge spoil by truck to Gillman or another site requiring landfill – and that it would be cheaper than carrying it by ship 30km out to sea.
“That way there will be no damage to the mangroves, it will be cheaper than dumping it at sea and environmentally it will be miles better because we won’t be potentially destroying the gulf,” said Mr Johanson, who has cited the dredging issue as a main reason for standing in the March election.
“When the EPA has said let’s dump at sea, where is the regulatory body looking after the environment? It’s getting beyond a joke.”
Flinders Ports chief executive Vincent Tremaine said the company did not agree that the material could be relocated to land.
“Quite factually, the unacceptably high environmental and operational risks associated with placing the dredged materials on land make such an option totally unviable,” Mr Tremaine said,
“Mr Johanson needs to understand that even if land disposal was viable, which it is not, the material is unsuitable as engineering fill and that it may render the land at Gillman unusable for a decade as a result of its geotechnical properties.
“This is not about cost savings. Unlike Mr Johanson, Flinders Ports and the EPA are not willing to risk environmental damage to the mangroves through the Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary caused by the infrastructure that would be needed to move the material to land.”
Mr Tremaine reiterated that the dredge material was not contaminated and meets national standards for placement at sea.
Mr Johanson’s concerns have been backed by local environmental groups and fishing industry body Wildcatch Fisheries, which fear the dredge spoil will kill thousands of hectares of seagrass and deplete fish stocks – as happened during the last dredging by the private port operator in 2005.
Flinders Ports’ application will be decided by Planning Minister John Rau.
The company is hoping start work in the next few months.
Source: AdelaideNow
