By Tom Kelly
A large protest movement has sprung up in Tasmania in response to last month's extension of the permit allowing Pasminco Metals-EZ to continue dumping toxic waste into the ocean. Actions so far have included an angry march and rally at state parliament on February 26.
The federal government decision is much more than a one-off lapse in environmental responsibility. This particular extension has serious implications for global strategies to control polluting industries. It contravenes the recently ratified London Convention on Ocean Dumping, which Australia signed in 1990.
Pasminco Metals-EZ has been dumping about 200,000 tonnes of jarosite waste into the ocean each year since 1973. The waste is an iron-bearing residue resulting from the zinc production process used at the company's Risdon plant. It contains a range of toxic chemicals such as cadmium, arsenic, copper, mercury and lead, as well as residual zinc.
The dump site is about 60 nautical miles from Hobart in water about 2000 metres deep, beyond the continental shelf. Studies near the site have found high heavy metal concentrations in marine organisms, including high cadmium levels in fish and sea birds.
While the decision to extend the permit was couched in a context of concern for the environment, the implications of extending the permit indicate that environmental considerations were given little priority. The decision demonstrates a failure to grasp the seriousness of both local and global problems of pollution and toxic waste.
When Ros Kelly (then environment minister) announced the extension of the dumping permit early last month, she said the decision was taken in the expectation that Pasminco will implement a new treatment process that will eliminate the need for ocean dumping by the end of 1997. She said it was uncertain whether the company could meet its previous deadline of December 1995, and that the alternative would be to dump the waste on land, which would create other environmental problems.
However, one could be forgiven for concluding that the more time Pasminco is given to get its environmental act together, the longer it will wait to do so.
The company has been producing the toxic residue at its Risdon plant since July 1971, when it introduced a new process to recover much of the residual zinc from its zinc production wastes. Jarosite waste, the final waste product of this process, was initially stockpiled on site.
Licences for ocean dumping were issued by state and federal governments in July 1973, and dumping began in December of that year.
Prior to 1984, when the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act came into effect, the original 1973 federal government licence was extended annually. Since 1984, special permits have been issued by the federal environment minister. The last permit, up until the end of 1995, was granted by Kelly on the condition that the "company continue to pursue as a priority alternative technologies which will obviate the need for dumping at sea of jarosite".
Any confidence in the company taking this condition seriously should have been undermined by the knowledge that as early as 1975 the government made it clear that it viewed ocean dumping as an interim procedure until a satisfactory alternative could be found.
In fact, an alternative already exists. According to a report in the Bulletin of last July 13, a Netherlands-based company has developed a process for storing jarosite waste on land, and another process for disposing of it. Pasminco is a 50% shareholder in this company! Apparently Pasminco regards the process as being too expensive to use at Risdon.
Under the profit-maximising imperatives of the free market, any process is "too expensive" if there is a cheaper one available. Given that the dumping licence is reported to cost Pasminco a mere $5000 per year, there is a strong incentive for the company to delay any shift to more environmentally responsible methods for as long as possible.
This is where the actions of the government, in extending Pasminco's permit beyond the December 1995 cut-off date set by the London Convention, fail to live up to Australia's global environmental responsibilities.
Pasminco, by externalising its costs (not paying to clean up the pollution it generates), gains an economic edge on its competitors in the world market who produce in a more environmentally responsible manner. This means that Australia is cheating on other signatories of the London Convention, and it creates a basis for other companies, no less motivated by the profit imperative, to pressure their governments to allow them to ignore environmental standards as well.
Capitulation to such economic pressures by governments is thus likely to have a domino effect, causing environmental controls (weak and inadequate as they are) to be further undermined in country after country.
The federal government, in creating such an obstacle to action against global environmental problems, puts the private profit interests of capital well ahead of the environmental security of the community as a whole.