Gunns: getting the facts straight ...

The recent call for public submissions on the Tasmanian Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) Kraft pulp mill highlights the need for even more myth busting, to enable the mill to be given a “fair go” by the Commonwealth Government.

The approval of the mill is fast becoming a major election issue for John Howard’s Coalition Government and Kevin Rudd’s Labor alternative. Electors deserve to know the facts before casting their votes or forming opinions based on myths.

Nowhere is this more evident than when the Federal Minister, Malcolm Turnbull announced that he received over 30,000 submissions on the pulp mill: most would have expected well informed comment, yet according to activist web sites the majority were form emails (PDF 313KB). A total of 31,323 submissions came from just two web sites: 25,773 standard emails from the activist web site Get up; and 5,550 submitted from the Wilderness Society.

In addition to this “click and send” campaign, was a submission stating the opinion of three scientists. It was publicly released with the fanfare of a media conference and PowerPoint presentation, claiming the Minister’s approval for the mill would be “a truly awful precedent for environmental management”.

None of these submissions, the form emails or the effort of the three scientists undermines the emission guidelines put in place by the Tasmanian Government back in October 2004.

These guidelines were developed by an international inquiry and require any mill to apply the principles of best practice environmental management (BPEM), best available techniques (BAT) and accepted modern technology (AMT).

This ensures dioxin levels in treated effluent are below international Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards (ELG) to protect human health, threatened and migratory species of birds, animals and fish and to safeguard the Commonwealth marine waters.

The Tasmanian guidelines provide for dioxin levels less than the limits set by the US EPA and by Canada. (Sweden does not have national standards and limits are set on a mill by mill basis.)

The limit is expressed as 10pg/L, this is a concentration of 10 parts per quadrillion as a litre is notionally a kilogram or 1,000 grams.

The mill’s expert European designers have estimated that the mill’s effluent will contain 3.4pg dioxin equivalents per litre. This is below the method detection limit of European and US analytical methods. It is the equivalent of measuring the concentration of salt after one salt grain has been put in the volume of 24 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Yet both the activist web sites generating the standard emails, and the report by the scientists, concentrate on dioxins and their impact on Commonwealth marine waters. And the Wilderness society tells activists “there are no safe levels of dioxins”.

In contrast the Commonwealth Department of Environment states that dioxins are in fact present in our every day environment and do not pose a health risk at background levels. The Australian health standard “Tolerable Monthly Intake” is 70pg TEQ/kg body weight.

As an everyday comparison, the concentration of dioxins and furans in the effluent is approximately 100 times lower than the concentration in human breast milk (PDF 498KB).

One of the three scientists even confirms that dioxin is not detectable in modern ECF pulp mills by quoting a Swedish research paper with an English version Executive Summary (PDF 2.26MB).

This report shows that the 19 ECF mills and two TCF mills, out of the 47 pulp mills of all types listed in Sweden, emit less than 0.1g TEQ per year. The estimate of less than 0.1g is based on similar methodology as that used to estimate the Tasmanian pulp mill effluent, by using the detection limit and applying it to the proportion of effluent attributable to the bleaching plants compared to total effluent.

While this might be advanced high school maths, you don’t need a PhD in mathematics to know the Tasmanian pulp mill’s effluent will be safe.

The form letters and the scientists’ reports are also based upon claims that the flow and dispersal of effluent will affect marine life including fish, lobster, abalone, scallop, and sharks. While these claims ignore where commercial fish are caught (PDF 560KB) they are also based on a photograph of Nye Beach (PDF 500KB) Oregon that has been interpreted by one of the three scientists.

The claim based on this photograph is that “the pollution will in fact reach the beach and disperse into Commonwealth waters, and into the rich fish-breeding grounds of the Tamar Estuary”. Yet even a cursory look will reveal that it is two photos joined together, likely to be taken on different days with different wind, current, sun and cloud positioning, as well as different textures to the photograph. The discoloration could be caused by a number of natural causes, and as there are no longitude or latitude references, just how accurate is the plotting of the (red coloured) effluent pulp line?

Amazingly not even the Commonwealth’s consultants who were checking these claims pointed out that the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality fully investigated claims of effluent hitting this beach. The local media reported that the DEQ found (PDF 779KB):

DEQ officials said they had no evidence the discharge endangers human health or marine life, and determined that while winds might push the effluent toward shore, “the dilution will be so great that pollutants will be well below water quality criteria prior to reaching the surf zone.” DEQ found no risk to people swimming at Nye Beach.

Yet this evidence was not believed by Surfriders.org who provided the photograph to the scientist without providing the DEQ report.

A third nail in the professional integrity coffin is that the Nye Beach sewerage outfall is on the surf line within 800m of the pulp mill’s diffuser. A fact not revealed to either the Commonwealth or concerned email clickers.

Another concern raised is odour, claimed to damage human amenity and other industries such as tourism. The scientists rely upon an “expert” currently employed by Ensis, a joint venture with CSIRO. This individual was a member of the RPDC assessment panel before choosing to resign after allegations of bias were made against him by the Greens political party.

In an astounding move the Ensis employee is now speaking out against the Tasmanian mill as a private individual, claiming that CSIRO has allowed him to express his personal expert views without sanction.

This is despite Ensis and CSIRO addressing both odour management and the issues of dioxin and ECF bleaching (PDF 72KB) that provide evidence to dispute and counter his personal views.

While there is absolutely no way of knowing just how many submissions came from the Tamar Valley, it appears the vast majority of the standard emails were from the Sydney-based activist web site.

The Wilderness Society is meant to protect wilderness and lately has campaigned on old growth forests. Yet the developer has stated that no old growth logs will be used as feedstock for the mill, and as 97.5 per cent of high quality wilderness is reserved in Tasmania there is no impact on the Tasmanian World Heritage Wilderness Area.

The Sydney-based Get Up organisation also ran a petition on global warming for APEC: almost a 100,000 people have signed up, over four times as many as the anti-pulp mill form email.

Just how many of these people concerned about climate change would have signed if they knew the pulp mill would save 1.1 to 1.3 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHG) each year?

By reducing shipping and using renewable biomass for its main power source, the proposed, environmentally friendly mill will save more GHG than emitted each year by the entire ACT including the nation’s capital, Canberra.

The mill will initially remove more GHG that the Federal Minister for Environment’s light bulb replacement project, which, hailed as an environmental world first, will remove only 800,000 tonnes per annum of GHG in the first four years.

The pulp mill is a GHG significant saving for Tasmania. The Australian Greenhouse Office reported (PDF 3.34MB) that by thinking globally but acting locally, the Tasmanian Government, together with the forestry and farming sectors, has been able to reduce GHG emissions by 23 per cent for the state from the Kyoto base year of 14.3 Mt CO2e in 1990 to 10.99 Mt CO2e in 2005.

This includes a massive 55 per cent reduction attributable to land use change by increasing afforestation and reducing land clearing despite exporting woodchips that will now be diverted to the pulp mill if approved.

With so many form emails based on such wrong information, the genuine concerns of Tasmanians are being swamped. People in Tasmania want to know just what the impact will be on the marine environment.

Already the Commonwealth (PDF 39KB)has advised that overseas experience demonstrates that conversion from elemental chlorine to ECF pulp mills, as is the proposed Bell Bay mill, with non-measurable dioxin effluents “has resulted in dramatically reduced levels of dioxins and furans in sediment and biota, rather than producing environmental or health problems caused by dioxins”.

This graph of Canadian mills (PDF 794KB) confirms this report.

The environmental credentials of any pulp mill in Tasmanian is vitally important to members of Timber Communities Australia who strongly support the pulp mill but it must meet the emission guidelines established by the Tasmanian Government in 2004.

TCA members live and work in the Tamar Valley, they work in the industry driving log trucks, working in the forests and mills. Their children attend schools in the communities, they all breathe the air and enjoy a wine or fresh Tasmanian sea food, some work in the tourism industry others are farmers and landowners.

TCA is funded by its members at various levels, including corporate support (hopefully by Gunns and other national industry leading producers); it has more than 13,000 members across 81 branches throughout the nation, made up of volunteers who have a passion for the sustainable use of natural resources and local communities that depend on the sustainable use of our natural resources.

So they are keen to ensure the mill will have no adverse impacts on our environment, public health, other industries and families. But they are also keen to have the substantial economic and social benefit of adding 2 per cent to the state economy, the jobs to be created and the benefits of creating a future for kids and communities.

Despite the 31,000 or so form emails and the opinion of three “experts”, the Tasmanian pulp will meet the vision of the Tasmanian Government, it will be Elemental Chlorine Free, it will minimise dioxins to below levels of scientific significance. It will meet conditions approved by the Tasmanian Parliament that protect the environment, minimise impact on other industries and safeguard public health.

All its needs now is a decision based on science, not politics, and removal of sovereign risk, that is Government risk, before this year’s Federal Election.