Lillian’s Eden

by Cheryl Adam

  WWF Australia spokesman, Richard Leck, estimated that the material dredged during the port expansion would be “enough to fill 150,000 dump trucks that lined up bumper-to-bumper from Brisbane to Melbourne.”

  This decision made by the GBRMPA, a statutory appointed body whose charter is purportedly to protect the region’s ecosystem, was horrifying to me.

  A senior researcher from JCU, Jon Brodie, warned that this would set a precedent for other ports up and down the coastline. He also warned of the effects of the dumping of dredging on seagrass meadows and coral reefs.

  Dr Russell Reichelt, was – and still is – the Chairperson and Chief Executive of the GBRMPA when the decision to dump the dredge on the reef was made. He was also head of the Authority when it reviewed its position on the priority ports. Reichelt is a research scientist who worked at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in the 1980s.

  As founding Chair of TOBMI (Tourism Operators and Businesses Magnetic Island) I had to reread the GBRMPA decision to dump spoil on the reef a few times in disbelief thinking it read more like a skit from an ABC comedy program Chaser.

  In April 2014, with TOBMI committee approval, I wrote a letter condemning the dumping of the three million cubic metres of dredge on the reef. Shortly afterwards, I received a phone call from someone higher up in the tourism industry than our small grassroots group. Didn’t I understand, he asked, quietly, that we would be compensated for the dumping? We wouldn’t lose money. It was better that the regional and local tourism organisations provided a united front.

  The message was clear: Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. This has been the common catchcry I’ve confronted when talking about the truth in a business that promotes tourism.

  In the end, after much public outcry, in December 2015, the Federal Department of Environment approved the dredging of 1.1 million cubic metres of seabed to be placed on vacant industrial land at the port, next to the existing coal terminal. The dredging still comes at a cost with the Greens and WWF noting that even that amount of dredging will endanger the internationally significant Caley Wetlands nearby. At the time of writing (2017–2018), plans to increase the number of new coal export terminals have suffered setbacks as many of the major mining companies that had sought to establish terminals at the port, including Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, have withdrawn from their projects. A number of banks also reportedly withdrew support, leaving Adani and GVK and Hancock Prospecting at that time the only companies still interested.

  In June 2015, GBRMPA had finally introduced a new regulation at the direction of the Federal Government to prohibit the disposal of capital dredge spoil within the Marine Park boundaries.57 In November 2017, a review was ordered by then Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, and was headed by Dr Wendy Craik, a specialist in fish biology and Chair of the Climate Change Authority. Craik found, among other things, that there was a perception from some stakeholders of meddling by the Federal Government in the management of the Authority.58

  One stakeholder, Dr Leanne Fernandes, commented that “political imperatives were perverting the course of management decisions” governing the reef and that GBRMPA had lost its voice over issues affecting the reef.

  Dr Craik identified three high profile issues which had made major contributions to the reef’s demise which included the Government’s approval of three liquefied natural gas processing plants at Curtis Island near Gladstone in 2010 and 2011; the leaking of dredge spoil from a bund wall at the Port of Gladstone in 2011 and 2012, and further approvals for expansion of the Abbot Point Coal Terminal which included the proposed dumping of capital dredge material in the Marine Park in 2013 and 2014.

  Dr Craik said the Abbot Point decision had focused national and international attention on the reef and “raised concern about management of the Marine Park and the independence of the Authority’s decision making.”

  Significantly, Craik also noted that after the 2016 bleachings, there was a coordinated response involving in-water surveys, multiple briefings, public forums and media interviews. A similar response was not made after the 2017 bleachings “due to a lack of resources.”

  Is the Authority prepared for continued bleaching and how well resourced is it for these catastrophes?

  In April 2018, Turnbull announced $500 million to save the Great Barrier Reef. This included a $444 million agreement with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation to tackle crown-of-thorns starfish “and mitigate the impacts of climate change” as though this was some containable issue. A Fairfax article59 revealed figures showing that Commonwealth funding to arrest declining water quality on the reef had dropped by $11 million a year. The Government’s funding announcement included a $56 million boost for GBRMPA. However, both the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and the WWF Australia estimated that $475 million was needed to be spent on water quality alone.

  As the Queensland Government commits to expanding more and more ports, the relentless assault on the reef and its marine creatures are often out of sight and out of mind. Even as far back as 2014, before the back-to-back bleaching of 2016/17, GBRMPA rated the long-term outlook for the reef’s ecosystem as ‘poor and deteriorating’. Crown-of-Thorns starfish (COTS) is one culprit in the destruction of the reef, as is poor water quality with pesticide run off. All of these features were playing out before the back-to-back bleaching.

  Shipping is also a major threat to the future of the Great Barrier Reef. In 2012, around 3947 ships called into reef ports according to The Conversation. The Report written by Adam Smith, a former member of GBRMPA, said that the projected number of ships was expected to exceed 10,000 by 2032, and that the average size of ships visiting the reef has grown by 85% over the past 15 years. When the Chinese bulk coal carrier MV Shen Neng ran aground on Douglas Shoal northeast of Gladstone in 2010, it left a 400,000 square metre scar, the largest ever recorded in the Great Barrier Reef.

  Abbot Point, estimated to have 500 ships offshore waiting to load coal if the Carmichael mine goes ahead, already hosts 311 bulk carriers. In 2016–17, 25.4 million tonnes of coal left Abbot Point on these carriers according to the North Queensland Bulks Ports Corporation 2016/17 Annual Report. Green and Flatback turtles nest on the beach right next to the Terminal 0 site earmarked for expansion by Adani should the Carmichael mine go ahead. Turtles are a visible indicator of the reef being under stress.

  In June and July 2012, 102 adult female turtles were stranded on Upstart Bay, south of Townsville around 39 kms from Abbot Point, where ships were offloading coal and transiting through the reef. Marine turtles are protected under state, federal and international legislation. Six of the seven species of turtle live in the Great Barrier Reef. Eighteen of the turtles were stranded alive. The bodies of those who had been given a post mortem showed neurological symptoms. I asked two of my senior students to investigate. Megan Stafford, a third year student, found that turtle strandings had increased.60

  The confirmed turtle deaths on beaches bordering Upstart Bay, however, were deemed an ‘unusual cluster’ with most of them being female adult green turtles. Strandings are linked to devastation of seagrass caused by cyclones as well as pollution according to scientific literature. Dr Jon Brodie’s paper specifically links water quality and marine turtle health. Brodie had also discovered that there were links in the Gladstone strandings and deaths of turtles from elevated metals in their blood, which came from dredging.

  However, then Department of Environment and Heritage Protection Senior Conservation Officer, Dr Ian Bell, told Megan Stafford that the baseline data is important. He described marine turtles as “kind of like the canary in the coal mine … People look at marine turtles and they look like a hard, boxy thing. But, the reality is they are really quite sensitive to the minor perturbations in the environment.” Dr Bell said, “If you have turtles swimming around in your area of water, things will be doing pretty well in there. They are a very good proxy indicator for how healthy marine ecosystems are functioning.”61

  In 2011 a
nd 2012, I came across many dead turtles washed ashore on Magnetic Island while walking on some of the island’s 23 beaches. Official figures of turtles stranded off Townsville from 1 January to 30 June 2012 were 168 compared to only 14 in 2016 and 12 in 2017 for the same time period.62 While the focus was on the rehabilitation of the surviving turtles, there did not appear to be much focus on the cause of their death except local opinions that it was because of Cyclone Yasi and a loss of seagrass habitat. Official reports state that 316 turtles were stranded in the Townsville District in 2012, accounting for almost a third of all the reported turtle strandings on the entire east coast of Queensland. 308 were stranded in the Townsville District in 2011 compared with 44 in 2009 and 96 in 2010.

  Fresh tissue samples from the liver, kidney, muscle, lung and shell collected from a dozen of the turtles washed up in Upstart Bay were analysed initially at JCU’s Vet School before being sent to toxicology laboratories in Brisbane and Amsterdam.

  GBRMPA Manager of Species Conservation, Dr Mark Read, told Megan Stafford that although these were preliminary toxicology findings, the interpretation was ongoing due to the sensitivity of machines analysing the samples. “What we weren’t expecting was that some of the material in the samples was at a concentration the machines couldn’t handle,” Dr Read said, adding, “In this situation, it occurred because a particular metal was at high concentrations.”

  Although the source of the metals was never found, the magnitude of the numbers of the deaths of turtles in one stranding is sobering. The story was hardly reported in the mainstream media with virtually no follow up even after the release of a Report by JCU, which included Read’s findings.

  A major river, the Burdekin, near the township of Ayr, south of Townsville, flows into Upstart Bay. There has been an approximate five to tenfold increase in sediment loads from the Burdekin catchment to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon since European settlement. Runoff from agriculture contains toxic metals, pesticides and elevated levels of nutrients. Mercury also occurs often in fungicides, the JCU Report determined, from sugarcane cropping near the bay. High rainfalls washed contaminants into the ocean. Although pesticides, like DDT, have not been used in Queensland agriculture since at least the 1990s, the report concluded this type of chemical was still found in the soil residue and river discharges during runoff events. The Report also noted that “a local source of marine chemical pollution” although undefined, was a possible (my emphasis) factor in the turtle deaths at Upstart Bay. It was an irrefutable sign of “undocumented environmental decline.”63

  With so many potential causes because of pollution, the cause is still not absolutely known. Dr Caroline Gaus who also conducted research in The River to Reef Research project64 on the cause of the turtles’ deaths for the National Research Centre for Environmental Toxicology said she found “chemicals associated with industry and agriculture” in the blood of the turtles from Upstart and Cleveland Bay closer to Townsville. The major issue, as is so often the case in this story, is that there are more than 30,000 chemicals in wide commercial use, according to Dr Gaus, and many of these have never been measured in the environment

  A 2017 study by the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Services (QAEHS), a partnership between the University of Queensland and Queensland Health, investigated green turtles in Upstart Bay, the same location where more than 100 died in 2012. The study found that there were four to 25 times higher levels of cobalt than the baseline established in the Howick group of islands in far north Great Barrier Reef.65

  As for UNESCO, which carries responsibility for World Heritage sites, as previously mentioned, it has cast doubt on Australia’s reputation as steward of the Great Barrier Reef. But unfortunately, UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee have little political clout. Australia’s response to the World Heritage Committee’s concerns was the Federal and Queensland Governments developing ‘The Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan’ (Reef 2050)66 in March 2015, ostensibly to counteract UNESCO’s concerns. But this ‘Plan’ has few realistic targets and does not focus on the impact from Queensland’s coal mines on greenhouse emissions.

  The World Heritage Centre and Advisory bodies in 2017 concluded that while there had “undoubtedly been an unprecedented level of increased effort to reduce pressures on the reef,” there was a need to accelerate attention to issues such as water quality, focusing on legislation to regulate land clearing, but above all addressing “the most significant overall threat’” to the future of the reef, climate change, and how this influences the effectiveness of the 2050 Plan.67

  According to notes from the Reef Advisory Committee (RAC) meetings in May 2017, obtained by the ABC, the Queensland Resources Council (QRC) the mining industry’s lobby group, urged key advisors on the Great Barrier Reef not to consider climate change in the Reef 2050 Plan. The QRC argued that there was no direct scientific link between coal mining and climate change although QRC Chief Executive, Ian MacFarlane, later told the ABC in a follow up article, in August 2017, that the notes were inaccurate and that dealing with climate change was important.68 Mr MacFarlane stated then: “QRC agrees the Reef 2050 Plan should include Great Barrier Reef specific climate change actions if it is consistent with a broader national climate change policy and action plan.”

  He also said he supported recent findings that climate change caused coral bleaching, but stood by comments, attributed to QRC, about the proposed Adani mine. “There is a difference between coal burning and coal mining and QRC’s position on the latter is mining itself is not a large contributor to climate change.”

  Clearly, as long as it’s not in your own backyard, what happens to the coal after it is mined does not appear to be of concern.

  Meanwhile, the Reef 2050 Plan is evidence of the continuing battle between economic growth on the one hand, and environmental concerns on the other. How much money will be provided to protect the reef remains to be seen. Alas, the World Heritage Committee does not have the authority to force Australia to refuse further port developments. Its only ‘big stick’ is to relegate the Great Barrier Reef to being listed as ‘endangered’, which it declined to do. Declaring a World Heritage site in danger, allows the World Heritage Committee (WHC) to allocate immediate assistance from the World Heritage Fund and can thus incite rapid conservation action. The Committee did, however, register its concern about water quality targets and land clearing. But it did not remove the reef from the World Heritage list altogether. During its 2017 meeting, the WHC expressed its concern about the effects of climate change and bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef as well as other reefs around the world.

  The Reef 2050 plan did contain a commitment to not permitting industrial port developments outside of the four existing priority ports: Townsville, Abbott Point, Hay Point and Gladstone. The Queensland Government passed legislation – the Sustainable Ports Development Act – to enforce this in late 2015. However, the expansion of the existing ports, is still a threat to the environment.

  Dredging is still continuing in the name of progress. In September 2017, Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Government announced funding for a $193 million channel-widening project for the Port of Townsville, and in February 2018, the Federal Government approved the Environmental Impact Statement for the expansion. According to a media statement, the Palaszczuk Government committed $75 million in 2017–18 seeking a matched $75 million in funds from the Federal Government and $43 million from the Port of Townsville. The project will involve dredging 11.48 million cubic metres of sediment to widen and deepen the Sea and Platypus channels and an expanded harbour basin. This was in spite of her government passing the Sustainable Ports Development Act in November 2015 to restrict new port development in, and adjoining, the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBRWHA). Dredging is a known issue affecting the reef. Dredging releases sediment in the water creating turbid plumes which migrate on to nearby sensitive habitats reducing light.69

  In our first few years on Magnetic Island, Grant had regularly spo
tted dugongs in those channels. Towards the end of our time there in 2015, their numbers had diminished. One of the Committee members, whom I had encouraged to join back in the early days of TOBMI in 2009, had been outspoken about the dredging for the port in 2017. After I left, she was quietly moved off the Committee.

  Confronted with the warning from UNESCO, and after signing the Paris agreement committing to fighting our contribution to greenhouse gases, the Federal Government went ahead to approve Adani’s $16 billion open-cut coal mine. In April 2016, the Queensland Government approved the company’s mining leases.

  Chapter 4

  The Midas Touch – Gujarat Open for Business – At What Cost?

  Bruce Currie is the closest you can get to the quintessential farmer. His Akubra hat is welded to his head. He wears open-necked checked shirts, has a bristly moustache, a broad smile, large farmer’s hands and a voice as deep as a well. He and his wife, Annette, own 1700 head of cattle in a good season but in a drought perhaps 400 head of cattle on a 25,000-hectare property called ‘Speculation’ north of Jericho, about 100 kms from where Adani is proposing to build the Carmichael mine. The property, which Currie describes as “the driest inhabited country on earth” spans the Great Dividing Range in the Galilee Basin.

  The Curries moved from the Bowen Basin where Currie had inherited the family property about 50 kms north of Emerald, farming half cattle and half dry crops like sunflower, wheat, oats and chickpeas, to get away from coal mining and to devote their farming efforts to cattle which Currie felt was more sustainable.

  But as Currie is fond of saying, after they bought the property near Jericho in 2005 they found: “We were out of the frying pan and into the fire.” He was to find that the Galilee Basin was being eyed off by a number of mining companies including GVK Hancock, then a joint venture between GVK and Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting, with several major coal mines proposed including Alpha, Alpha West and Kevin’s Corner.