Thankyou to the City

A good piece of news for the Sound this week was the City of Albany voting to oppose the dumping of the dredging spoil in King George Sound. Although the city has no jurisdiction on this issue, they can have a say - and they did.
Originally, councillor Dot Price put forward the motion to oppose the dredging site but her recent resignation meant that the motion was not discussed until this week. Councillor Dennis Wellington put forward the motion and the Mayor Milton Evans seconded it.

In the Albany Advertiser this week, Councillor Wellington was quoted as saying that he was not 100 percent convinced that dumping the dredging spoils in the Sound was a viable option. He said that if it were approved and it ended up being the wrong site, there was no turning back. "I would hate to think that I had a part in stuffing up our coastline, so I have to oppose the proposed dumping site," he said.
The Mayor Evans said, "We can't just sit back and let the Environment Minister tick off on this."

The City of Albany had previously attempted to lodge an appeal to the Environment Protection Authority but it was rejected because they didn't get their act together on time. This was not too big a crime, considering that the EPA released the Albany Port Expansion Report as a public document on the 18th of January and shut down appeals to this document after February 1st!

Item No. 18.4, Minutes:
"The grounds of the appeal related to the acknowledged impact of dredging on local recreational and commercial operators, as well as shortcomings in the hydrographical analysis identified in the peer reviews of the environmental management plan."

Those peer reviews sound like interesting reading ... Anyway, some suggestions were raised for the dumping of the dredging spoils. It was put forward that the sand dug out of the Sound be used to rectify previous disasters created by meddlesome groyne builders - at Emu Point and the site of the new entertainment centre. Ahem. I'll leave that be for now.

The media liaison officer at the City of Albany wrote that it was unclear whether lobbying of the State government will influence or add to the process that the Minister for the Environment is required to undertake by statute. But lobbying for the Sound could be Albany's version of the Hippocratic oath - it may heal heal and will definitely not harm. The Council, in a week that has probably been quite trying for them in other areas, have done something rather marvellous here. They deserve a bit of commendation, a letter of thanks from the people in the community that they represent, a beer perhaps, a bunch of flowers.

There was one other person whose name constantly popped up in the minutes; bringing the EPA report to the attentions of the councillors, writing an appeal in sheaves of longhand and pleading with the council to help save King George Sound from dredging spoils; right after the Albany Port Authority's slick power point presentation. It was the dogged Tony Harrison. He's always there. Good onya Tony and thank you.

Albany Advertiser, April 22, 2010, p. 6.