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Myth busting - the Gunns pulp mill

By Alan Ashbarry - posted Friday, 31 August 2007


On October 26, 2004 the Tasmanian Premier, the Hon. Paul Lennon, announced that the Tasmanian Government had approved a set of emission limit guidelines for a pulp mill in Tasmania - as recommended by the Resource Planning and Development Commission (RPDC).

These guidelines had been developed during a nine-month international inquiry and required any mill to adhere to the recent Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants while applying the principles of best practice environmental management (BPEM), best available techniques (BAT) and accepted modern technology (AMT).

Since then there has been growing opposition and community alarm about the development and assessment process and this week the Tasmanian Parliament will vote to approve or reject the mill. Public comment to the Commonwealth closes this week with many claims and counter claims being made in the media.

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It is an issue that has divided stakeholders including many concerned people dependent on other industries in the area: it has put the blow torch on Tasmania as did the former pulp mill proposal in the late 1980s.

But just what is fact and what is fiction? There are many myths about the pulp mill, and if they are “busted” the mill still meets the clean green standards promised by the Premier.

In 1989 the last straw for the Wesley Vale pulp mill was when “Richo” (then federal environment Minister) commissioned the CSIRO to draw up a further report and consequently investors pulled out. The issue in 1989 was not the environment; it was sovereign risk, that is to say government risk.

That’s why Paul Lennon was so keen to draw up the guidelines first: a process that sought the input of the Federal Government, regulators, experts and the public. It included a world wide search for the latest technology and environmental controls by expert consultants.

The Tasmanian guidelines require that any kraft pulp mill will be either elemental chlorine free (ECF) or totally chlorine-free (TCF). Either way, dioxin is virtually absent.

The types of organochlorines that were a focus of attention with the proposed Wesley Vale pulp mill - dioxins and furans - will not be a significant factor for the Gunns pulp mill. The guidelines imposed mean the entire mill must operate on a hierarchy comprising waste avoidance; waste recycling/reclamation; and waste re-use. Any marine discharge at the end of these processes would have to have no significant environmental effect outside the small mixing zone.

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Yet, almost three years on, these issues and more are still being debated through the community and media. But many of the claims don’t stand scrutiny when fully examined outside the 30-second news grab.

On Sixty Minutes it was claimed “They're going to build it in classic Tassie wilderness country”. The transcript shows the reporter told viewers “Depending on who you listen to, the pulp mill will either be an environmental catastrophe or guarantee Tasmania's very future”.

Yet the pulp mill will be built in the Bell Bay Precinct (PDF 812KB) near Georgetown in Northern Tasmania: already the most significant industrial estate in Tasmania, with a large number of major operations within its borders including an aluminium smelter; a ferro-alloy processing plant; the major Port of Launceston; export woodchip facilities; aluminium powder plant; seafood processing facility; Bell Bay Power station; a sawmill; and Gunns woodchip mills. Until recently it was also the site of the Starwood MDF plant.

A key issue is that the mill will use pulp wood arising from integrated saw log harvesting in native forests and pulp wood from specifically grown plantations. Both the RPDC process and the Commonwealth Assessment recognised that these forests were subject to sustainable management under the Regional Forest Agreement and as such the social, economic and environmental impacts are already being controlled so as to have no significant adverse impacts. The Federal court has confirmed that this recognition is valid.

Tasmanian forest management is also accredited under the Australian Forest Standard (AFS), the Program for Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFC) and forestry companies operate to the ISO 1400 Environmental Quality Standard. Forest reservation (PDF 1.15MB) has increased almost four-fold since the Wesley Vale debacle and Tasmania, for so long the battle ground of forest politics, has 47 per cent of its native forests reserved.

However groups such as the US based Rainforest Action Network have opposed the pulp mill, falsely claiming that “The chlorine-bleaching mill would also greatly pollute the atmosphere and surrounding marine environment, including the production of deadly chemicals such as dioxin and furan”.

The Tasmanian pulp mill will be ECF - Elemental chlorine free. The World Bank (PDF 545KB) has endorsed ECF and Tasmania’s own expert consultants - who looked at ECF and TCF bleaching - have reported that “PCDD and PCDF emissions in ECF and TCF effluents are about the same. If ECF bleaching is used, the emissions of 2,3,7,8-TCDD and 2,3,7,8-TCDF to water are lower than the limit of quantitation (US EPA Method 1613).”

Yet despite this finding Tasmanian commercial fishermen have expressed concerns that effluent could taint fish in the vicinity of the ocean outfall due to claims that the modelling of the dispersion of that effluent was inadequate. Calculations for dioxin levels (PDF 147KB) appear to ignore international experience and have been quoted in the hope of giving this criticism legitimacy.

A check of official government research reports to show where the fish including rock lobster, scallops, scale fish and abalone are located (PDF 561KB) reveals there is virtually no commercial fish being caught now, or likely to be in the future, near the pipeline.

These concerns over dispersion models ignore the fact there is already treated effluent from a Victorian pulp mill (also clean and green) being discharged into Bass Strait and that this effluent is rapidly diluted (PDF 286KB).

The myth that the dispersion modeling was inadequate and that pollution was going to hit the Commonwealth marine waters, the beach and the Tamar River originated from a photograph (PDF 501KB) of a non bleaching pulp mill outfall off Nye Beach Oregon.

If these myths are busted then the fishing industry should not be impacted upon.

The vineyard and tourism sectors have also expressed unease: these industries have been built up around Georgetown’s heavy industrial estate to date without concern: however, like fishing, these industries are vital to local economies. The Tasmanian Government and the developer who is also the part of the vineyard and tourism industry (PDF 387KB) located in the Tamar Valley have not ignored their concerns.

Around the world pulp mills, vineyards and tourism happily coexist. They do so in British Columbia, in Oregon, in Chile and throughout Europe including Portugal and the Bordeaux region in France. One concern is odour, which, according to one scientist, the Europeans call the “smell of money” but the developer has added extra design features to all but eliminate this problem and Ensis, the CSIRO joint venture is working towards elimination.

Public health has also been a feature of the debate. Launceston, about 30K south of the mill site regularly experiences an inversion layer which traps the smoke from wood heaters causing a problem with air quality. However the developer has used air quality modeling developed by CSIRO, and independently verified by Dr Peter Manins, Senior Research Scientist, Marine and Atmospheric Research, CSIRO. He told the ABC Four Corners program:

Launceston’s got far more concern, should have far more concern over the local domestic wood heaters and motor cars and smoking. They are far more important issues for the public in Launceston than this pulp mill, 36K away. The pulp mill might add or one or two micrograms per cubic metre, compared with wood smoke of 50 to 200 micrograms per cubic metre. What is one or two compared with 50 to 200?

Politicians are under enormous pressure: faced with an intense media campaign and a lobbying effort unprecedented in Tasmania including thousands of emails from within Australia and around the world, many prompted by the false claims of the Rainforest Action Network on chlorine bleaching.

A report commissioned by the state government by ITS Global demonstrates that the net social and economic benefit for Tasmania was assessed as “positive and high”. The mill will add 2.5 per cent to Gross State Product and about $6.7 billion to the economy over the life of the project.

The state’s report by international expert Sweco Pic assessed the project against those rigorous Best Practice standards announced by the Premier way back in 2004 and found the project could proceed to Parliamentary consideration subject to some conditions. The need for this independent assessment was because the developer withdrew from a joint Commonwealth-State assessment process that after more than two years had yet to release a draft report.

Both the developer and the government were blamed for the delay. Yet the public hearing process started to unravel when one member of the RPDC process was accused of bias due to his employer’s (Ensis - a joint venture of CSIRO) involvement in the project. This has been the most controversial part and has been subject to legal challenges and accusations of corruption.

Despite this controversy the public have had a major input. A total of 780 submissions, including pro forma submissions, were received by the RPDC, all of which were made available in the new assessment process. The Commonwealth received about 120 submissions in relation to the Listed Threatened Species and Communities, and Listed Migratory Species; and approximately 220 submissions referred to the Commonwealth Marine Environment.

The Federal Court determined it was valid for the Commonwealth not to hold public hearings. Even for the RPDC these hearings were optional as defined by Section 24 of the State Policies and Projects Act 1993.

However three years on, the environmental credentials of the project still stack up. The Commonwealth’s Department of Environment and Heritage told (PDF 39KB) the Minister that “Based on the available evidence, the Department has not identified any likely significant impacts on the marine environment in Commonwealth waters from the proposed pulp mill”.

Yet despite this finding DEH also advised that is was “desirable” (not essential) to force the developer to do more modeling and more monitoring over and above state requirements. The DEH is recommending that the Tasmanian Guidelines established in 2004, and accepted as a National standard, be thrown out and replaced with now even more stringent standards.

The biggest impact is likely to be on politics in Tasmania if the issue of sovereign risk is raised once more, despite the finding of no likely significant impacts.

Hopefully these recommendations will not be accepted as Tasmania can ill afford another “Richo” decision which resulted in Tasmania going into an economic downturn. A downturn so severe it prompted Prime Minister John Howard, upon first being elected to office in 1996, to commission the Nixon inquiry (PDF 54KB). This found that an unfriendly business environment made it difficult to develop manufacturing industries in Tasmania which would be viable and competitive on world markets. “This factor has been associated with the high levels of sovereign risk associated with the Tasmanian forestry industry.”

Let’s hope history does not repeat itself and we learn from the mistake of believing in myths!

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About the Author

Alan Ashbarry is the researcher for the 15 branches of Timber Communities Australia (TCA) in Tasmania. He has a deep commitment to people in communities that depend upon the sustainable management of Australian forests and acknowledges the pride that forest scientists, professional foresters and timber workers have in providing a renewable resource and in creating jobs that have long term benefit for society, the economy and the environment.

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