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| Media Transcript |
Legislative Council INTERVIEW: 5AA: Concern that the desal plant at Point Lowly will damage the waters in the Upper Spencer Gulf April 28th, 2010 (Byner: Yesterday you heard us talking to Michael Angelakis and in fact a lot of South Australian foodies and people from the tourism industry were getting together to encourage the Government to think carefully about having a desalination plant at Point Lowly … they are worried about what could happen to that very important and lucrative fish catch that is so good for the State and it has a lot of ramifications … for our environment. … Now … Mark Parnell, the Greens MLC says the Rann Government should tell BHP Billiton to scrap Point Lowly as their preferred location for a desal plant for the Olympic Dam. … this is going to be very controversial because there is a mine expansion and …during the election campaign the Government were out there saying … look what’s going on … in the wake of the Rann Government there is all this mining expansion and keep things going the way they are, keep the foot on the accelerator and get us back. Well the public did that so Mark … what are you hoping to achieve and good afternoon?)
G’day … Regardless of what people think about the Olympic Dam expansion one thing that is now clear is there is a growing chorus of people who are saying that a desalination plant at Point Lowly is a bad idea if they’re going to be discharging all of the waste, that is a concentrated brine back into the Gulf. What we were deciding about yesterday with all of these foodies … is that a lot of the focus has been on the giant Australian cuttlefish, a wildlife species that’s potentially endangered by this sort of desal plant. What they’re reminding us is that this Upper Spencer Gulf is also a great nursery for many of our commercial fish species. In other words you get rid of the nursery and you kill the fishery and that’s their concern. So what I’m calling on the Government to do is to pay attention not just to me, pay attention to the parliamentary committee that looked at this last year, pay attention to the Government’s own scientists including those working at the South Australian Research and Development Institute, pay attention to the Flinders University scientists. All of whom are saying that it is fraught with danger to dispose of brine from such a big desal plant in the upper reaches of Spencer Gulf where the water flow is very low and the water exchange is very low … the water stays up there. It doesn’t flush out into the open ocean vey quickly. It can be years before the water actually turns itself over and all of those things add up to what the parliamentary committee that I sat on concluded and that is, seek a better location, find a better spot, not at the Spencer Gulf.
(Byner: What’s the Government’s thinking on this so far, do you know?)
The Government’s thinking is that BHP Billiton have done and EIS … The company has said that this is the best location. Now that’s code … for this is the cheapest location … it’s a part of the South Australian coastline that is closest to their mine … because what’s expensive is pipes and pumps. Other people have said that there is a far better location and I tend to agree over on the West Coast … where you’ve got deep ocean, fast flowing currents and the brine can be dispersed into the marine environment without too much risk but that’s going to add to the cost and that’s why the company doesn’t want to do that.
(Byner: How can the people of South Australia have a say in this?)
Well 4600 South Australians did bother to have a say. They put in submissions to the EIS, that BHP Billiton prepared last year.
(Byner… you’re an ex-town planner and you’ve got a master’s degree. Shouldn’t the Environment Protection Authority be involved in this?)
The Environment Protection Authority is involved in commenting on the EIS that was prepared and there was a document. It was called a whole of Government response and the sort of questions that we’re talking about now from memory were raised by the Environment Protection Authority and they were raised by a number of Government agencies. Lots of questions to BHP. Now BHP had to go back and they’re now looking at these 4,600 submissions, including the Government departments, having a look at what everyone has said and they’re going to come up with a supplementary document later in the year. Now people will have access to that and will be able to comment on it but it seems to me that it’s not that hard. The Government can today say, look we’re all in favour of the BHP expansion going ahead but you are not going to have a desalination plant with ocean out fall in the Upper Spencer Gulf. Find a better location and that chorus has been consistent certainly from the Greens but now it’s been added to by these famous foodies yesterday so I think there is some momentum Leon building around this. There has got to be a better location than the top of a Gulf where the water doesn’t change over very often.
(Byner: Mark Parnell thank you)
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