Bay dredging clean-up fudged

Wednesday, 25 November, 2009

Media release

Following the announcement today that channel dredging in Port Phillip Bay has been completed, the Victorian National Parks Association revealed that the Port of Melbourne Corporation (PoMC) breached key environmental conditions, consequently damaging significant marine life in the bay.

Documents from the PoMC website show the Queen of the Netherlands ship continued to dredge areas of Port Phillip Bay that had not been adequately cleaned - a clear breach of the standards set out in the Environmental Management Plan.

The management plan conditions specify that dredging must not take place or
re-commence in any area until the PoMC-Boskalis Alliance office confirms that a sufficient clean up of large rocks and rubble has been completed.

"Between 20 July 2008 and 30 July 2008, the Queen of the Netherlands continued to dredge areas of the entrance that had not been cleaned to standards required by the Environmental Management Plan," VNPA spokesperson Paige Shaw said today.

"The alliance office reported the breach of environmental conditions to the PoMC four days later, but information in the Queen of Netherlands log book indicates that dredging continued anyway."

Ms Shaw said because debris from the dredge was not cleaned up, large slabs of rock were dragged along by ocean currents and the dredging ship, destroying important parts of the bay's marine habitat.

"Video footage of the area suggests that 10 times the amount of predicted rockfall has fallen into the canyon near the Port Phillip Bay entrance due to dredging operations and PoMC's failure to comply with the specified environmental conditions," she said.

"As a result, the bay's colourful sponge gardens have been crushed by rocks up to two metres in size. Now, more than half of Rip Bank is bare rock.

"The Brumby Government must require the PoMC to use the $100 million environmental performance bond to develop, fund and implement a comprehensive recovery plan for the sponge gardens and to establish a biodiversity monitoring and mapping program in Victorian waters."

The bay's sponge gardens were recently listed by the Victorian Government as a threatened community under the state's Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act
"The sponge gardens found at Port Phillip Bay entrance consist of more than a hundred species found nowhere else on earth. Unfortunately, their listing under the Act was too late to protect them from the dredging damage," Ms Shaw said.

For more information please download the VNPA media backgrounder on this issue as well as the Environment Defenders Office letter of advice about the environment performance bond.

For interviews contact Sacha Myers, VNPA media officer, on 0417 017 844.