[Greens-Media] Sydney's desal pollution saga risks Botany Bay marine future

[John Kaye]

Sydney's desal pollution saga risks Botany Bay marine future
 
Media Release: 21 April 2008
 
After three days of persistent silt spillages at Silver Beach, NSW Water Minister Nathan Rees has little choice but to put an immediate hold on the construction of the desalination water pipeline across Botany Bay, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.
 
Dr Kaye said: "The construction consortium has not been able to lay the first of two thousand pipeline links without leaking a plume of silt into the shallow waters of the Bay.
 
"With 1,999 to go, Minister Rees needs to provide evidence that digging a massive underwater trench will not stir up an unacceptable load of silt and toxics.
 
"More than one and half centuries of dumping industrial waste into the Bay and its tributaries has resulted in a massive accumulation of heavy metals including mercury and dangerous organic compounds such as ethylene dichloride.
 
"Silt spills not only suffocate marine ecosystems but they carry the risk of a concentrated toxic load that will poison corals and marine creatures such as sea dragons. 
 
"The Government claims that the same silt nets that collapsed at Silver Beach are going to contain the silt during the dredging of the underwater trench.
 
"Without further studies, the residents of Sydney can have no faith that the past three days are not just a sample of more disasters to come.
 
"Dredging risks spreading the noxious weed Caulerpa taxifolia. If the silt net fails as the dredging passes through one of Botany Bay's infestations, it will just take one tiny fragrant of this noxious weed to escape and destroy yet more fragile ecosystems.
 
"Minister Rees was warned from the outset that dredging the floor of Botany Bay was a high risk activity.
 
"The events at Silver Beach over the past three days prove that the desalination pipeline construction will threaten the ecological future of Sydney's largest waterway," Dr Kaye said. 
 
For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455 
 
 
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John Kaye
Greens member of the NSW Parliament
phone: (02) 9230 2668
fax: (02) 9230 2586
mobile: 0407 195 455
email: john.kaye at parliament.nsw.gov.au
web: www.johnkaye.org.au
 
mail: Parliament House, Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000