Whyalla group fights for gulf.

 

The Save Point Lowly Group is fuming over the State Government’s gutless decision to withhold BHP’s Supplementary EIS for 8 weeks. They say the residents and experts have overwhelmingly rejected the proposal, but the government seems determined to proceed regardless, (Whyalla News 7th December 2010).

 

Group Chairman, Dr. Andrew Melville-Smith said BHP should have been told to do a whole new EIS for the desalination plant because the first one failed to consider viable alternative locations for the desalination plant, such as Elliston.

“If the State Government dares to approve this disastrous desalination plant, they will be liable for all the losses incurred by the fishing industry and other groups” he said.

“The State Government has been warned about many serious with the desalination plant such as:

- Catastrophic loss of micro-nutrients from the high-pressured reverse osmosis process;

- The effect of increasing the salinity of the Upper Spencer Gulf on the ability of the cuttlefish to reproduce;

- The potential for heavy metals in the Upper Spencer Gulf contaminating the water;

- Possible breaches under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act 1999) that affect over 170 migratory bird species that depend on the Upper Spencer Gulf.”

Supporter of the Upper Spencer Gulf, Assoc. Prof. Kaempf of Flinders University says “The ecology of Upper Spencer Gulf is under severe threat by the proposed BHP Billiton seawater desalination plant at Point Lowly.”

Save Point Lowly group spokesman Tom Cheesman, dismissed any suggestion of BHP Billiton building an artificial breeding habitat for the Cuttlefish or a Marine Research facility as ludicrous, verging on ‘hush money.’ Tom said, “BHP Billiton has buckets of cash.”

“If they can afford to pay for artificial reefs, research centres and compensation to shack-owners, then they can afford to have a slightly longer pipeline and site the desalination plant at Elliston.”

He said, “There is an alternative at Elliston that will provide water for the local communities and the whole mining boom, not just BHP’s Olympic Dam Mine.”

“The Elliston option gives us more jobs, will be cleaner because it would be wind powered and it won’t trash the Upper Spencer Gulf.”