Coordinator General’s Traveston dam report gets “thumbs down”

MEDIA RELEASE

SAVE THE MARY RIVER COORDINATING GROUP

Sunday October 11th, 2009

Groups fighting the controversial Traveston Dam proposal met in Tiaro on Saturday to discuss the Coordinator General’s list of 1,200 conditions.

Save the Mary River Coordinating Group President Glenda Pickersgill said the combined groups had quickly identified “a long list of unproven and bureaucratic conditions that, rather than allay our environmental concerns, actually heighten them.”

Glenda Pickersgill

As the list of flaws in the coordinator general’s report were collated, the group was disappointed to see the extent to which concerns which had previously been raised with the Coordinator General had been ignored.

“Downstream groups are incensed that the Coordinator General continues to hold the line that the dam will have “minimal downstream impacts,” explained Ms Pickersgill. “This is in spite of the fact that even very preliminary assessments highlighted probable impacts on Ramsar wetlands and numerous studies since have shown this to be the case.”

President of the Greater Mary Association Darryl Stewart, said downstream residents, particularly those in Maryborough and Hervey Bay, were appalled at how readily their concerns had been dismissed.

Darryl Stewart

“This downstream community put in more than 10 000 submissions to the EIS, they’ve written thousands of letters to state and federal politicians and they even brought about the defeat of a state Environment Minister over his support for the proposal, yet the government plays their concerns with a straight bat and says ‘there will be no impact.’”

Save the Mary’s Glenda Pickersgill said she welcomed recent comments by the internactional conservation group, the World Wildlife Fund that directly challenged the Premier’s claim that Traveston would be the greenest dam ever built in Australia.

“Only the words have changed since they claimed that Paradise Dam would ‘raise the bar in environmental excellence’,” she said. “Now it’s on a worldwide list of 10 failed dams and finds its operators in court over their failure to comply with conditions. And there were only 6 conditions for Paradise, not 1,200,” she said.

Ms Pickersgill said that with the release of the conditions and more than 2,300 pages of new information, the community needed an opportunity to make comment and called on Peter Garrett to call for submissions before he made his decision.

Ms Pickersgill said the reality was that Peter Garrett wouldn’t make the decision in isolation. Apart from his departmental assessors, he would be guided by a group of key federal Labor politicians including the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

“Not only is Peter Garrett’s environmental credibility on the line with this decision, not only will it decide the success or failure of the federal EPBC Act, but it would put a black spot on the Prime Minister’s environmental credentials,” concluded Ms Pickersgill.

Media contacts:

Glenda Pickersgill (Save the Mary River Coordinating Group) 041 144 3589

Darryl Stewart (Greater Mary Association) 041 877 1655