Duncan Meerding & Tim Douglas, Hobart
The campaign against woodchipping giant Gunns' proposed pulp mill at Longreach on the Tamar River is stepping up. The release, in July, of its 7500-page integrated impact statement (IIS) makes clear that the social and environmental impacts of the proposed pulp mill could be devastating.
Bob McMahon, of Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill, told Green Left Weekly the pulp mill will liquidate much of Tasmania's native forest within the first eight years of operation, a fact even Gunns' IIS acknowledges. "Eighty percent of the feedstock for this pulp mill will be native forests. Already, we log at one of the fastest rates in the world, and this will increase it", he said. The wood supply will come from forest managed under the controversial Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement, and the Forestry Practices Act, 1985.
The mill is being backed by the state Labor government, which accepts the company's PR material that only good things will come from the project. Besides jobs and a boost to the state's coffers, Gunns boasts: "The pulp mill project ... will not involve any changes to forest access or additional intensification of forestry operations. Woodchips that otherwise would have been exported will be diverted to the pulp mill for value-added processing. No old growth logs will be used in the mill."
But Paul Oosting, a campaigner with the Wilderness Society (TWS), says that "Over the first 25 years of operation, 36% of the mill's consumption would come from native forests. After 25 years, 32 million tonnes of native forest logs would have been fed into the pulp mill. This is more than 2000 square kilometres of native forest, which will include areas such as Blue Tier, Ben Lomond, South Sister, Great Western Tiers and Reedy Marsh."
Gunns states that it will need access to Tasmania's forests for at least 30 years. Forest destruction and land clearing will escalate as new plantations are established, Oosting told Green Left Weekly. "This means clear felling of native forests, intense burning regimes, 1080 poison baiting and aerial spraying in domestic water catchments."
The other major concern is that the supposed "clean and green" mill will use outdated and polluting technology. TWS points out that it will not be totally chlorine free, as first promised, but "elemental chlorine free" (ECF). That means that chlorine dioxide will be used in the bleaching process. Chlorine will be required to remove the higher levels of lignin found in old-growth and mature trees.
Gunns states it will require 26 billion litres of water per year and that it will discharge 30 billion litres of effluent which contains organochlorins into the Bass Strait each year.
According to TWS, "Highly toxic persistant organic pollutants (POPs), such as dioxins and furans, will be discharged into Bass Strait. This [portion of Bass Strait] is in an area with limited water movement, where it can take up to 160 days for flushing of water to occur."
Lee Bell from the National Toxics Network accused Gunns of falsely claiming that the bioaccumulation of dioxins and furans in marine animals is not an issue. "This is an extraordinary claim contradicted by global scientific opinion."
The mill will pollute the ocean, air and groundwater with dioxins, furans, resin acids, sterols and dangerous air-borne particulates, Bell said on August 22. "There is growing evidence that discharges from ECF mills in other countries are causing sub-lethal effects in fish, including reproductive abnormalities and liver enlargement."
Dr David Leaman, a geohydrologist, believes that the IIS did not scrutinise the effect of the changed climate or water demand on the general environment, and he recommended that "the proposal be denied until such an appraisal is attempted and vetted".
An August 26, 2005 report by Gunns states that "the mill must be of world scale to be competitive", and estimates that the mill will incur a "direct capital cost" of between $1-$1.5 billion. The company has engaged the ANZ banking giant to coordinate funding for the project which is estimated to cost more than the woodchipping company is worth. Along with other dubious global investments (toxic mines in Laos, clear-felling forests in Indonesia), ANZ is also investigating investing in the pulp mill project.
TWS paints a bleak picture for Tasmania's forests if the mill gets the go-ahead. But an even bleaker one has come in from the Jakarta-based Centre for International Forestry Research. A May 11 study explains that a single large pulp mill, with a production capacity of 1 million tonnes, requires the equivalent of 15% of the Brazilian Amazon's annual timber harvest — nearly 12 million tonnes.
Richard Barton of Cleanup Tasmania said on August 24 that an immediate and serious concern is the pulp mill's impact on Tasmania's forests and farms, which he believes has been largely ignored by the Resource Planning and Development Commission and the state government. "If the Centre for International Forestry Research report is correct, then Gunns mill will require around 12 million tonnes of wood each year as feedstock."
Oosting told Green Left Weekly that the location of the mill is another major problem. "There's an inversion layer in the Tamar Valley, so pollution from the pulp mill is going to worsen the already existing air problems." Last year, state Labor MP Judy Jackson said that eight people per year die in Launceston as a result of air pollution. "This pulp mill could add to that", Oosting said.
Gunns' 2005 report to shareholders states, "The [pulp mill] project provides an ability for the Company to obtain an increase in the value of pulpwood through accessing the pulp market in addition to its current woodchip markets". Oosting told GLW that Gunns plans to continue to export its plantation timber, while using native forests for the mill. Apart from this waste, it is also the opposite of what Tasmanians have been promised.
"We were told that plantations were being established so [Gunns] could move out of native forests and old-growth logging. But, it seems clear that Gunns want their cake and want to eat it too." Oosting said that the mill will lead to an increase in woodchipping from 4 million tonnes per year to 7 million. "It's a massive escalation of forest destruction."
McMahon said the campaign against the pulp mill in the northern part of the state involved a broad range of people, from the Liberals to the Greens, as well as those without any party affiliation. "The pulp mill is a symptom of a much bigger disease in Tasmania: the systematic looting, or liquidation, of a resource — native forests. It is a world-scale pulp mill, and Tasmania is not a world-scale island."
[A march and rally has been called by TWS and Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill for September 16, noon at Civic Square, Launceston. For more information, go to <http://www.wilderness.org.au>, or phone Hobart TWS on (03) 6224 1150 or Launceston TWS on (03) 6331 7488.]