Great Barrier Reef Authority Slammed Coal Port Dredging Plan In Drafts Months Before Approving It
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In a series of draft documents dated from 2012 to August last year the authority repeatedly warned that the reef could be irreversibly damaged by the plan and argued for an alternative that would see trestles extended 1km beyond the original plan to avoid dredging new coal shipping berths.
“The GBRMPA considers that even with best endeavours, the likely impact of the dredging and disposal on nearby benthic [sea floor] habitats and threatened species would be environmentally and socially unacceptable,” says an updated executive summary for a Capital Dredging Permit Assessment done in June last year. North Queensland Bulk Ports Corporation, the company behind the port expansion, has always maintained there would be minimal environmental impact, with the water perhaps going cloudy for a while.
The summary, obtained by Greenpeace under freedom of information laws, says the habitats are recovering from a series of severe environmental impacts and the information in the environmental impact assessment provided by the corporation did not adequately address the potential for further damage to recovering habitats.
The assessment of the area likely to be affected was “substandard and possibly under-representative”. “The proposal to dredge and dispose of up to 1.6m cubic metres of sediment per year for three separate campaigns between 2014 and 2020 has the potential to cause long-term, irreversible harm to areas of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, in particular seagrass meadows and nearby coral reefs,” the summary says.
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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/02/great-barrier-reef-authority-argued-against-dredge-dumping-foi-reveals