Dredging on again!
PR merchants are studiously ignoring the fact that dredging and dumping of contaminated spoil from the Yarra will continue for another 2 years. In reality we are really only half way through a continuous four year dredging event – of which it is impossible to yet know the environmental and economic consequences.
Mr. Brumby recently announced that channel deepening was officially over, and $200 million under budget with the unveiling of a massive 10 metre high sculpture named ‘Footprint Alliance’ donated by Dutch dredging firm Boskalis. What a shame we don’t have a picture of the new pride of the PoMC.
“The sculpture pays tribute to the enduring partnership achieved during the project between PoMC and Royal Boskalis Westminster. It is an expression of the exceptional infrastructure work completed. I wish to thank Boskalis for this significant gift which will take pride of place alongside our Port Education Centre and Melbourne VTS on the Yarra River.” PoMC CEO Mr Bradford says. (Dredging Today.com 16th December 2009).
We're not sure that we like the sound of an “enduring partnership” with the dredgers who have been at it the Bay for the last 2 years!
But, what the two Mr. B’s didn’t say was that “maintenance dredging” has already started in the Yarra and will continue until 2011! Once that’s done, we suppose PoMC might think it’s time to start maintenance dredging somewhere else in the Bay? Perhaps that explains the “enduring partnership”?
Aside from the 22 million or so cubic metres dredged throughout the Bay, the “completed” channel deepening project moved around 400,000 m3 of Yarra sludge. Maintenance dredging will move another 300,000m3 from the Yarra and dump it in the same toxic dump where the first 400,000 m3 has just been dumped. And we are expected to believe that removing the further 300,000m3 of sludge, much of it contaminated, is unrelated to the 2 years of Yarra dredging and dumping so far!
Does PoMC have the right to be claiming successful completion of anything?
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