Tue, 07/01/2014
Greens MLC Robin Chapple today slammed the EPA’s recommendation for the Gorgon expansion on Barrow Island.
The conditional approval will allow clearing and earthworks of an additional 32 hectares on Barrow Island for extra construction laydown and operations support to the existing Gorgon project.
This supposed increase is a case of smoke and mirrors as we already know that Chevron, by the camouflage of using WA Oil land, has already increased its land use by a further 235 hectares prior to this addition.
This was a development that the EPA said, in 2006, is environmentally unacceptable due to the risk of the introduction of non-indigenous species to Barrow Island Nature Reserve, and we now know there have already been 39 minor breaches, two major breaches and five critical breaches of quarantine.
“In my view, the EPA has granted Chevron a further licence to destroy Barrow Island, a further licence to expand when it guaranteed to us that it did not need any more space on the island; a licence to impact on wildlife on the island; a licence to breach quarantine; and a licence to do any of those things that the EPA said the corporation should not do but continues to do,” said Mr Chapple.
“I found the whole dealing around this legislation has been incredibly bad. It is a nightmare. It was Australia’s ark; it has been irrevocably damaged and I doubt whether we will get it back to the island it once was,” Mr Chapple lamented.
“This has just been a creeping incremental disaster!” he added.
The EPA’s reportto the Minister for Environment is now open for a two-week public appeal period, closing January 20.
For more information please contact Robin Chapple on 0409 379 263 or 9486 8255
