Originally published on www.yourwateryoursay.org on 20 Aug 08.
Your Water Your Say Media Release, 20 Aug 08
The Your Water Your Say Action Group (www.yourwateryoursay.org) is heartened to see that 12 months after the State Government announced it is to build the largest desalination plant in Australia on the Bass Coast, they have finally published the environmental assessments of the project.
After the Government, the DSE and numerous consultants have spent 12 months working on the assessments, the public will have only 5 weeks to review over 1600 pages of highly technical and complex documents.
YWYS President, Andrea Bolch says that this highlights the absolute inequity in this process. "The public, who have to do this in their spare time and at their own expense have only 5 weeks to review this enormous report that has taken full time, highly paid consultants, 12 months to prepare." The system is totally biased and does not allow the public to fully and properly engage in the process.
To emphasise this point, the public is being charged around $250 for a full set of the documents in hard copy. Given this is, at minimum, a $3.1 billion project with consultants already paid millions of dollars, this is an insult to be pinching pennies from the public.
Ms. Bolch says "The Government designed EES terms of reference specifically narrow to get the evaluations and outcome that they wanted that would simply support their decision. The EES does not include any evaluation of the water augmentation options available to Melbourne and there is no doubt this report does not include costing information for the public, who will pay for this plant, to really understand what the real cost will be."
This is a process intended to make it look like the public is involved but it is a farce. The EES is not designed to determine "IF" the project should go ahead but has become the blueprint for the tenderers to build the plant. It will no doubt set out a number of conditions that will simply need to be met by the contractors when developing their submissions.
Construction of the project has already begun without any environmental assessments being released. Expressions of Interest to build the main plant have already been completed without any knowledge of the environmental impacts it will have. The Brumby Government has said from the day the plant was announced that "it will be built" and this was without knowing its environmental consequences.
When the EES process was established 30 years ago it was set up to ensure that decisions were taken with full knowledge of the environmental consequences. This Government has turned the whole intent of the EES process on its head by making the decision with no information on the environmental consequences, designing a scope of reference to get the outcome they want and then using that information to support their decision.
The EES has been reduced to being nothing more than a highly stage managed process that enables the Government to stand up and say they have the assessments that support the decision they took 12 months ago.
YWYS is still in limbo with the Government as yet undecided as to whether or not it will pursue the organisation for court costs. How can we legitimately participate in a process with a sword hanging over our heads that could stop us from properly participating and contesting the EES.
For more information contact:
Chris Heislers, 0419 556 381, heislers [AT] netspace net au
Andrea Bolch, 0400 065 253, abolch [AT] austarnet com au
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