BY ANTHONY BENBOW
PERTH â Kierath says our existence is a 'planning mistake'. We've been here at Wattleup four decades, Hope Valley a century â that's long before the heavy industry at Kwinana. So which one is the 'planning mistake'?
Brian Vidovich, president of the Kwinana Air Buffer Zone (KABZ) group, is angry about attempts by WA planning minister Graham Kierath to extend the Kwinana industrial strip and in the process obliterate the communities of Wattleup and Hope Valley, south of Fremantle. Many other local residents share his outrage.
Kierath has introduced legislation to fast-track the government's Fremantle-Rockingham Industrial Area Regional Strategy plan, a move KABZ member Horst Ruthrof describes as brutal. If this goes through, it will bypass two acts in place to deal with the humane requirements and complexities of planning, Ruthrof said, by removing landholders' right to make any changes to their properties without specific state government approval and quarantining the land for future industrial development.
Landholders will be allowed to sell land only to the government and residents say the compensation offered is inadequate.
The heavy industrial area at Kwinana includes oil, nickel and bauxite refineries, a chemical works and a power station. The area is adjacent to Cockburn Sound, the most severely degraded marine area around Perth, according to a 1996 environment department report.
Concerns about sulphur dioxide emissions resulted in the establishment of the Kwinana air buffer zone in 1992, which includes Hope Valley, Wattleup and surrounding areas. As well as protecting horticultural and rural uses, the buffer includes sensitive wetland areas, a rubbish tip and bauxite refiner Alcoa's tailing ponds.
Vidovich recalls that local residents were unhappy with the way the buffer was created, One day we were rural, the next we were part of a buffer zone. We asked why was there no consultation.
Residents found out in 1997 that the state government had produced a draft discussion paper which proposed a sweeping expansion of industry into the buffer. Initially claiming that the paper was too expensive to print, the government eventually caved in to residents' demands to print and distribute an extra 500 copies.
Residents' anger grew when they realised that the government planned to convert the entire buffer area into an industry zone, on the grounds that such an expansion was necessary to protect residents from industrial accidents.
The KABZ group points out, however, that no reason was ever given for extending the current risk contour beyond the edge of existing heavy industry, and that research shows a substantial improvement in sulphur dioxide emissions in the buffer. World Health Organisation levels for residential areas have not been exceeded in the last five years.
The government now claims that the Kwinana industrial area is a cornerstone of the WA economy. First they tell us the buffer is to protect us from industry, Vidovich said. Now, suddenly, it's to protect the industry from us!
The KABZ group spent $20,000 on a detailed community submission opposing industrial expansion at Kwinana, as did Cockburn Council. The submissions called for further restrictions on pollution and heavy industry, the expansion of existing townships and a scheme on mixed land use that protects the environment.
Both submissions were ignored and both groups were denied a place on the planning committee for the scheme. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry, however, was welcomed onto the committee with open arms.
The debacle at Kwinana will be one of the topics under discussion at a Politics in the Pub forum in Fremantle sponsored by Green Left Weekly, titled Saving our environment: community control versus corporate profit. The forum will take place on June 23, 7pm, P&O Hotel, 25 High Street, Fremantle.