A legal challenge by environmental group Blue Wedges to the federal government's approval of the dredging of Port Phillip Bay was defeated in the Federal Court on March 28. Blue Wedges' case was based on the slipshod manner in which environment minister Peter Garrett approved the project on February 6, a week after the giant dredging ship the Queen of the Netherlands arrived in Melbourne on January 29. The ship was commissioned by the Victorian government to dredge a new shipping channel in the bay.
While Garrett supposedly considered the 50,000 pages of submissions given to him, Blue Wedges contended that the minister had "predetermined" his decision, a reasonable assumption given that the "yet to be approved" dredging ship was already in the harbour. An appeal by Blue Wedges to halt dredging of the bay until this latest action was heard in the court had not been granted.
In handing down his decision to dismiss the action, Justice Tony North said that "Blue Wedges has not established that the minister failed to act in accordance with the requirements of the law" and that "it is not the function of the court to make a judgment as to whether the channel deepening is a good thing or a bad thing or whether it is harmful to the environment or not".
The confidence of the Victorian government that the project would be "approved" by the federal government must have been high, as the dredging ship remained docked at a cost to Victorian taxpayers of $100,000 a day.
An April 3 statement by Blue Wedges, which has been campaigning against the dredging plan since it was first announced more than three years ago, explained that "Mr Garrett chose not to exercise his available powers to protect the environment. If he had wanted to, he could have ordered further investigations, looked more closely at the environmental record of the Port of Melbourne Corporation [PoMC] and Boskalis [the dredging company], or involved other relevant ministers in his decision. But he didn't — he did just the minimum …"
Blue Wedges spokesperson Neil Blake told Green Left Weekly that future legal action could not be ruled out. He said dredging was scheduled to begin on April 4 and that Blue Wedges "plan[s] to support the water-based action group Operation Quarantine with support from the land".
The dredging project has three major components, all of which are extremely hazardous to the environment: rock removal at the mouth of the bay; dredging of sand and toxic sediment from Port Phillip Bay and the Yarra River; and the dumping of the toxic sediment in a "bund" off the coast of Mornington and Brighton.
Experimental rock removal from the mouth of the bay in 2005 resulted in delicate sea sponges being disturbed and unplanned rock falls. These sea sponges exist nowhere else on Earth. The rock removal will also facilitate greater tidal flow into the bay, possibly threatening wetland areas.
The dredging will suck up soil containing arsenic, mercury, lead, dioxins and a range of other poisonous substances.
The underwater containment facility — or bund — will have contaminated material placed in it. It will be left uncovered for at least 140 days (and possibly much longer) and be subject to at least 560 tidal movements.
The core of the bund, comprised of contaminated sediment dredged from the base of the Yarra, will remain exposed until covered with sand. The walls will be built with clay from below where known toxic sediments exist. To get to this clay, the toxic layer will need to be dredged first.
The bund will be capped with half a metre of sand, which will be the only thing separating toxic material from the water. The bund is expected to take at least two years to complete, yet the process of "consolidation" of the underwater dump will continue for decades. PoMC rejected land-based treatment and disposal as "too costly and difficult".
The most critical phase of the bund is in the first 70 days, when the contaminated sediment is added and allowed to settle. If there is a major storm during this time, the sediment can be disturbed and leak into the water quickly. PoMC has assured the public that it will be "safe to swim", yet similar dredging that occurred in Sydney Harbour during the Olympic construction resulted in commercial fishing being banned due to extremely high levels of heavy metals and chemicals.
Dr Vicki Kotsirilos of the Australian Integrative Medicine Association stated on March 18 that "If these chemicals or heavy metals leak into the bay, either from dredging or from storage 'bunds' in the middle of the bay, we may not be able to eat the bay fish. It may even be dangerous for us to swim at some beaches."
[For more information visit http://www.bluewedges.org.]