Port red-faced after bay dredging blunder
Following the November announcement that channel dredging in Port Phillip Bay had been completed, the VNPA revealed that the Port of Melbourne Corporation (PoMC) had breached key environmental conditions, damaging marine life in the bay. Dredging continued in areas that had not been adequately cleaned - a breach of the standards set out in the Environmental Management Plan. The plan specified that dredging was not to take place in any area until a sufficient clean-up of large rocks and rubble had been completed. Between 20 and 30 July, 2008, the 'Queen of the Netherlands' continued to dredge areas of the bay entrance that had not been cleaned to standards required by the EMP. |
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Because of this, large slabs of rock were dragged along by ocean currents and the dredging ship, destroying important marine habitat.
Video footage of the area suggests that ten times the amount of predicted rockfall fell into the canyon at the bay entrance.
As a result, the bay's colourful sponge gardens have been crushed by rocks up to two metres in size. More than half of Rip Bank is now 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 and their unique species were recently listed by the Victorian Government as a threatened community under the state's Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.
Unfortunately, their listing under the Act was too late to protect them from dredging damage.
