Thank you for the opportunity to discuss our submission with you,
I thought I would use my 20minutes to focus on the impact on flora and fauna.
although I would ask you to also note that we are also very concerned with social and economic impacts of the project, the production of greenhouse gases during construction and operation
In fact we would ask that energy for the operation of the pipeline be sourced solely from renewable sources (not offsets)
And the overall unsustainable nature of the pipeline which I will address later I my presentation
We are also very concerned about the impact of the removal of 75 gigalitres per annum from the Goulbourn – Murray region. This water will be lost to that catchment whereas previously water that leaked from irrigation channels was staying within the catchment as ground water.
I have focused on environmental issues because of the small value which these issues have been given in this project. This is can been seen by the weighting in the Triple Bottom Line criteria and scoring table in the Alliance Environmental Management Strategy (EMS pg25) which I’ll discuss in more detail later on.
Any proper quality assurance system or structure design system requires that input documents be completed as a precursor to the design phase.
However the chosen process for this project is to push on making alignment choices before conducting full field surveys needed to determine the impact of scraping clear a 30m construction corridor through remnant native vegetation of high conservation significance.
Victoria is facing a biodiversity crisis. We are the most cleared state in the country with 30% of our native animals and some 44% of our native plants either extinct or threatened (Env Issues paper, CSIRO)
The state government has recognized this and in part is attempting to address it with the Native Vegetation Framework. The framework requires in the first instance that vegetation removal be avoided.
Offsetting is the remedy of a last resort, a remedy that is a much lesser value in protecting our biodiversity.
And to produce net gain any offsetting has to be truly new vegetation of the same type and ecological values. Not some formal protection of existing vegetation. There is no net gain unless vegetation removed is replaced with new vegetation.
To ensure that threatened species are discovered the field studies should be carried out over a period of at least a year. Typical baseline studies go for 5 to 15 years, it’s a nonsense to think you can fully discover the species present in a quick 1~3 month survey.
Even with the limited field work to date, appendix P of the alliances EMS nominates seven EPBC listed species which, depending on the alignment chosen, will be impacted by this project. The Flora and Fauna assessment stated that nine FFG listed species and twenty five DSE listed species could also be impacted.
Clearly the location and extent of these species needs to be determined before the alignment of the pipeline can be chosen. Doing it any other way will lead to either acute bends like the roads in the Dandenongs which meander around trees or wholesale clearing of significant vegetation.
Looking at the scoring criteria setout on page 25 of the Alliance EMS.It is very disturbing that the criteria for the triple bottom line is so strongly biased away from the impact on threatened species. Threatened species are only valued at 7% of the overall score with native vegetation impacts valued at 7%.
As cost is valued at 60% of the score we cannot see how the statement on page 104 that “The importance of native vegetation… is also reflected in the high weighting assigned to the native vegetation component in the multi-criteria TBL assessments” can be justified.
Clearly this projects TBL has not considered the biodiversity hazards facing Victoria. Budgets are important but will have a lesser impact on the state than the continuing threat of our biodiversity crisis.
The overall Greenhouse costings of each route and the project as a whole also need much greater weight than the current 3% for climate impacts
30m construction corridor is an ambit engineering claim. This also reflects the small value (7%) placed on retaining native vegetation or consideration for threatened species.
Surely the construction corridor can be reduce in width to avoid the complete clearing of native vegetation for 70Km.
This is a “silver bullet” approach to solving Melbourne water issue, introducing additional water cannot be seen as a sustainable solution.
Sustainable means steady state solutions not ones that need an ever increasing addition of more resources,
We need to be living within our means, not taking resources from another catchment to satisfy our current thirst.
After all what happens in 15year when Melbourne needs another 200 gigalitres
Wouldn’t we be better to work on reducing our demands?
Human nature is such that without a hard restrain, we all take the easy way out, unless we force ourselves to live within our means we will always need ever increasing supplies of water
And of course there is a limit to the amount of water Australia can provide.
In conclusion the best outcome is for pipeline not to be built as it is an unsustainable project;if it must be built then
I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.Louis Delacretaz, convenor of the Country Greens Network