Last season 42 separate whales were sited within 10 kilometres of the desal site (stat decs and photos confirm this). The Government’s EES said there were virtually no whales in the area and it was not significant habitat (the EES said only a couple of whales had visited the area over the last five years).

To build on the data from last season we are launching “WHALE WATCH”, an initiative to get details of as many whales as possible visiting us this season. We will then have good data to see how construction and later operation of the desal plant is effecting these beautiful creatures.

Please click on the image above to get a printable version and distribute wherever you can. Phone in any sightings, even any unusual events that you observe on our coast, we should be able to get photographers and observers down asap.

Further details as to where to drop off forms if you see something and fill one in will follow shortly

Form to record Whale sighting.          Download

Document to help you recognise and identify whale species.          Download

It has been about nine months now since the consortium building the desalination plant last met with the community to give any details of what they plan to build.

This is a very unsatisfactory situation. The government have set up a community liason committee that gives the community the same spin answers as the DSE used to. After requesting the answers to many questions over the last months without getting answers we called for another community forum. In the end we have had to set one up ourselves. Senior staff of the consortium have been asked to attend and sit on a panel, as have staff of the Bass Coast Shire. We also have a panel of water, environmental and economic experts to help answer the community’s questions about the desal plant being built and its likely effects.

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FREE ADMISSION:  Saturday 22nd May

Wonthaggi Town Hall, 7.30 pm.

Please click on the poster and print off copies to distribute to those you think might be interested

Friends of the Earth Australia have just published some great stories in their latest magazine -

click here to see the whole thing

The Greenwashing of desalination plants energy use:

http://www.foe.org.au/resources/chain-reaction/editions/chain-reaction-108/greenwashing-desalination/

And an article by Watershed’s Chris Heislers:

http://www.foe.org.au/resources/chain-reaction/editions/chain-reaction-108/victorias-bass-coast-desalination-plant/

And a good one on Water Privatisation:

http://www.foe.org.au/resources/chain-reaction/editions/chain-reaction-108/water-privatisation/

Water is such an important issue for us all that Watershed encourages you to read these and other articles from the latest Friends of the Earth magazine.

WATERSHED

BULLETIN No 8

JANUARY 2010

IS NOW AVAILABLE

Click here, or on the image, to get it

PAST EVENT
FRIDAY 22nd January, 7.30pm, Wonthaggi Town Hall.

A GREAT time was had by around 250 people who attended the Watershed fundraiser show, “Bugger the Polar Bears - THIS IS SERIOUS”. As well as being hilariously funny, there was a fair bit of educational content as well.

Energy use of Melbourne’s Water Supply set to skyrocket!

A quick look at Melbourne Water’s current and future energy use reveals some concerning facts, especially in the light of the need to reduce electricity use and carbon emissions. By clicking the image below you will see a breakdown of current energy usage in all aspects of Melbourne Water’s activities. The energy usage of the desalination plant will mean we will be using at least three and a half times as much energy once Melbourne Water starts sourcing water from the desalination plant.

As requested both Westpac and Nab sent representatives to a meeting with Watershed representatives at Kilcunda on Wednesday 14th October.

Results of our meeting with the banks in relation to our concerns about them not meeting their ethical investment guidelines:

• A presentation was given by Watershed pointing out our concerns and some background to the issues. The banks filled us in on various aspects of how they see their obligations and how they assessed the project.
• The banks have assessed this as a B-grade environmental and social risk project (from an A to C or no ranking range). Our fears were well founded, in that they admitted they largely relied on the proponents environmental assessment (as poorly scoped and resourced as it was), to give the project an acceptable risk assessment.
• Both banks used a consultant firm, originally employed by AquaSure, to “do their assessment”.
• The banks agreed that ongoing assessments would be required, although the scope or scale of this was not available.
• They claimed ‘confidentiality’ as their reason for not previously consulting Watershed, and for not immediately being able to address some of our concerns.
• The consultant, who was present, said he believed that alternatives were not available, based on previous work he had done for Government, and an unspecified document he did not name or indicate availability of.
• Watershed pointed out that by relying on a flawed EES and failing to consider all issues the equator principles 2 and 3 in particular had been inadequately addressed. After our presentation there was general agreement that the issues around using desalination to secure Melbourne’s water supply were many and varied.
• Watershed have left the banks with a list of issues that we feel have been inadequately addressed including some of the above and also the following; we have requested they furnish us with responses to these concerns in a timely fashion:
  • Why was the project given a category B status given the scale, implications for future water policy, location, multiple areas of impact, unresolved concerns and unaddressed issues involved?
  • How can their environmental assessment be adequate given that it either did not, or only inadequately addressed issues such as the need for baseline studies, choice of site or processes, climate change implications, social issues and cumulative impacts of this project over time and with existing and future projects?
  • What do the banks see as ‘consultation’, what will the following plans contain and when will they be available:
    • ’social environmental management plan’
    • ‘borrower’s grievance mechanism’
    • ‘works environmental management plan’
    • ‘ongoing environmental monitoring plan for compliance’ ?
  • What degree of public transparency will the banks require of the above, and when will they be required?

Stay tuned to see whether the banks reassess their involvement in this project or whether we get satisfactory responses to these and other concerns.

• Please continue to send letters with your concerns to the banks, click here.
• Should you be prepared to take action if we do not get satisfactory responses please contact us, click here.
• Click the ‘BANKS’ tab at the top of the page for more information on this issue.

Housing Hardship on the Bass Coast - more desal impacts

If you know anybody in this kind of situation please call Jessica on 0407 307231,

or if you have evidence of specific locations where people have been dislodged from their accommodation, and replaced by desal workers please call Maurice on 0419 552385.  Maurice is also looking for a copy of the EMP (Environmental Monitoring Plan) that is supposed to exist for the works underway at present, should you happen to know where a copy could be found.

The government now owns a land easement from the Bass Coast to Melbourne’s suburbs.

Around 125 farmers and other landowners have had parts of their properties compulsorily aquired, and this has happened without the usual 5 month notice. The government have kindly told the farmers that they won’t have to pay rent on this land (at least not yet). Read the story in ‘The Weekly Times’ newspaper at the link below:

http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2009/09/25/116381_latest-news.html

The National Bank espouses their environmental credentials in relation to investment decisions for the money we place in their care. Yet now they are allowing the desalination plant to go ahead, preventing better and cheaper options from an environmental point of view, from going ahead, by backing the desalination plant’s construction.

Write a letter of objection:

Download, print and post a letter addressed to their Board of Directors here, or
download a letter to their Corporate Responsibility Department here, or
download an alternative letter to their Corporate Responsibility Department here, or
Cut and paste bits or all of these, or use the dot points below to create your own letter, and send it to  NAB via their contact webpage here, or you can ring,
ask for their ‘Corporate Responsibility officer’,  1300 889398.

• shortcomings of environmental assessment study
• the consortium aren’t committing to proper monitoring of marine effects
• so much water we won’t build the sustainable alternatives
• financial risk to bank
• bad investment
• what could go wrong (soils, substructure of area-mines etc, size of project, water temperature, more ?
• NAB’s reputation as environmenatlly responsible may be lost
• backlash
• env and social impacts -traffic, housing, green tourism
• long-term damage to bank’s reputation
  

____________________________

Here is a flyer that we are handing out at NAB branches - Click here

_______________________________________

To the Board of Directors,
National Australia Bank Head Office,
800 Bourke St,
Docklands 3008

NAB’s Investment in the Wonthaggi Desalination Plant:

On the 31^st July, Aquasure, a consortium made up of Suez Environment (affiliated to Degremont), Theiss and Maquarie Capital announced that it would be building the Wonthaggi desalination plant.

Aquasure and the State of Victoria secured a financing package, ‘lead by NAB and Westpac’, and supported by banks from Belgium, China, France, Italy, Japan, Spain and the UK.

NAB’s decision to finance the project is contrary to your stated principles of responsibility toward the environment and your adoption of the “Equator Principles” in October 2007. NAB could not legitimately claim that this project met even the most basic of environment requirements, due to the following :

1. Lack of credible environmental assessment of the site before works began. The shortest Environmental Effects Study (EES) on record took place - inadequate and insufficient for such a complex public infrastructure project, planned to be the largest desalination plant in Australia.
2. The long term effects of the construction and operation of the desalination plant have not been properly assessed. Comprehensive baseline data collected over 2 - 3 years is required prior to construction / operation in order to develop an optimal monitoring plan. In addition, no completed Cultural Heritage Management Plan, required for a comprehensive assessment and planning, was completed.
3. Location adjacent to Bunurong Marine Park, in a migration paths and activity zone for whales. The marine investigations in the EES were inadequate and deficient in their examination of the impact of the discharge from the desalination plant on marine life. There are significant gaps in the existing reports regarding failure to highlight known important EPBC listed species (e.g. three native orchids, Dwarf / Antarctic Minke Whales) and the frequency of presence of species, particularly migratory marine mammals.
4. Marine effects:
   • Mixing: There has been no analysis of the social, environmental or economic cost in the event that the coastal upwelling shifts the brine pools along the Victorian coast. The outlet pipeline needs to be at least 2 km off shore (the current Aquasure plan shows pipe only 1.1km in length). An outlet on a true sandy bottom is “world’s best practice” and is essential to minimise negative impacts of brine and other chemical accumulation. The planned outlet is on moderate relief reef, rich in marine life.
   • Intake : The cumulative impacts of the entrainment of eggs, plankton, fish, larval life stages and other small marine invertebrates in the intake of seawater.  Studies are required into the effect of entrainment of eggs and larvae of marine fauna.
   • Outlet : The cumulative impacts of the discharge of ecotoxins, and the potential for pooling of ecotoxins on the marine environment and human health.  The effect that the long term accumulation of organic detritus (typically includes the bodies of dead organisms or fragments of organisms) will have upon the marine environment was not assessed.
   • Other areas of concern : Impact on coastal habitats, including the Powlett River, other coastal estuaries, rivers, inlets and bays; impact of construction and the operation of the desalination plant on endangered birds, such as the Hooded Plover that breeds within close proximity of the subject site; impact of the construction and the operation of the desalination plant (particularly noise emissions) on protected marine species including: Blue, Southern Right and Humpback whales; Dolphins; Little Penguins; Seals and sea lions; Leatherback Turtles; Sharks, specifically the Great White Shark.

5. French infrastructure company GDF Suez, whose subsidiary Suez Environnement is a lead member of the Aquasure consortium, has a track record of breaches of performance requirements, after illegally logging Amazon rainforest during the construction of the $5.6 billion hydro-electric dam in Brazil. It was fined $305,000 in February for clearing 19 hectares of rainforest, some of which was protected by a permanent reserve. The project has been fiercely opposed by environmentalists, who say it will flood 520 square kilometres of rainforest, triggering tonnes of greenhouse gases from rotting vegetation, as well as impeding fish migration. According to Spanish news agency EFE, the company also used dynamite to kill 11 tons of fish in local rivers.
6. Carbon emissions associated with huge energy use: With only one larger desalination plant operating anywhere in the world, the scale of desalination proposed would prevent as many as 900,000 tonnes of existing emissions being avoided every year. The surplus energy from wind and hydro projects, that would still be available if cheaper water supply options had been chosen, will not be available to actually reduce existing emissions.

There has been little, if any, critical analysis of the desalination project promoting and complying with the principles of ecological sustainable development, which includes the precautionary principle.

NAB have signed on to a set of corporate environmental principles to guide their investment strategies. I find it difficult to see how they can be reconciled with investing in the Wonthaggi desalination plant.

I appreciate that NAB would be undertaking due diligence on this proposed investment and that it may find this investment not consistent with its stated corporate responsibilities and obligations toward the environment.

I urge the bank to investigate the many threats to the environment caused by the construction and operation of the desalination plant in Wonthaggi.

Yours faithfully,

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Address ……………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………Postcode……………………