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The article below was written by Dungog resident Fran Crane and an abridged version of it was published in the Newcastle Herald.

River of Hope—But doomed to be dammed

The attached article about the end of the NSW coal industry was published in the Newcastle Herald on 13th April 2007.

Anecdotal reports published in the Daily Telegraph suggest Grey Nurse Shark numbers have been underestimated.

I think anyone who cares about such things would be pleased to hear that there are indeed 6000 grey nurse sharks in our waters. But I’m not breaking open the bubbly in response to unreported assertions by recreational fishers and unnamed “insiders”.

Find below the article written by HCEC Urban Sustainability convenor, Simon Fane, about the proposed new dam on the Williams River and published in the Newcastle Herald on 17th November, 2006.

Georgina Woods, Hunter Community Environment Centre

October, 2006

The release yesterday of the final Lower Hunter Regional Strategy and Draft Regional Conservation Plan exemplifies the ongoing ambivalence of this State Government towards biodiversity conservation and the environment in general. The addition of 20,000 hectares of public land to the reserve estate is very welcome, and the role of the Premier in this gain is heartening. Our serious conservation deficit for the survival of habitats and ecosystems has begun to be addressed. At the same time, the Regional Strategy has foreshadowed loss to coastal landclearing of a further 4,500 hectares of vegetation, much of it high conservation value and critical to the region’s future.

HCEC believes that the Environmental Assessment conducted for the third coal loading terminal at Kooragang Island exemplifies everything that is wrong with the planning and assessment process regime in NSW. The devastating cumulative impacts of the project -- resulting from dangerous climate change -- were not addressed by the EA, although the possible benefit of decreased crime rates in Mayfield was!

 You can download HCEC's submission for a more full response to the impacts of this proposal including:

1. climate impacts
2. increased mining activity
3. impacts on the Green and Golden Bell Frog
4. impacts on threatened plants and endangered ecological communities
5. social, economic and inter-generational impacts

Following the submission period, the Planning Minister established an "Expert Panel" to investigate the project further. Despite reciveing 700 submissions opposing the project on the grounds that it will exacerbate climate change, the terms of reference for the panel do not include the contribution that the loader will make to increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and fuelling climate change.

The Hunter Community Environment Centre compiled a review of NSW Fisheries catch data from 1940 to 2000 entitled “Empty Oceans Empty Nets” in February 2006, presenting the best available time-series data on the state of NSW fisheries. The Report was compiled due to the dearth of information on the health of our marine environment, and in particular the sustainability of current fishing pressure in NSW. It did not claim, and never intended, to be a scientific report. It has created a storm of reaction from fisheries scientists (Forrest and Pitcher from the University of British Columbia) and the Primary Industries Minister, Ian MacDonald, has now written to peak environment groups in NSW telling them not to use Empty Oceans Empty Nets.  We find this kind of behaviour baffling in the extreme, especially since the two "fisheries scientists" who have challenged HCEC's methodology in the report did not even address the fundamental issue: that the NSW fishery is in serious decline due to overfishing.