Moreton Bay Sand Dredging ?

[Black_Rat]

Did anyone see the notice in the Public Notices section of the Courier Mail on Saturday where the Brisbane Airport Corporation propose to extract 15 million cubic meters of sand from Moreton Bay (Middle Bank) area for use for fill for the new runway / taxi ways at the mouth of the Brissie River #:-/ and what impact it might have on fishing that area ??

[dazza]

hi black rat,
this has been in the planning for quite some time.
i agree it will be very interesting to see what it does to sand flows, water quality, fishing etc
from what i have read, the planning is advanced (read; it will go ahead) i understand that all epa requirements have been met etc etc.
the bottom line is, the govt will aprove it, because they want big flash airports, and this mining will occur offshore unbeknown to 90% of the population, when bribie falls into the ocean, and the shipping channel silts up, they will blame something else. our current state govt is very good at hiding things under the carpet
cheers
dazza

[tincanpeter]

The Govt. doesn't have to sweep anything under the carpet, they just missinform. I remenber how the natural resourses Dept or my I correct that by saying the then minister claimed that a property in the Theodore area had a huge salt problem. The owner challanged the minister to visit and show him this huge so called problem, that he was unawhere off , they could only find a couple of acres of salty land. No more was heard. Cubbie station was the same with thousands of acres. this was established by airiel plotting by some scientific instrument. There was also a claim in the artical that the only false reading could be given by clay deposite and certian minerals. Cubbie is all heavy clay as is most of the Darling downs. That is why the mud sticks like araldite.
A friend asked some officers of that Dept about this statement and they replied that they knew all about the clay and it wasn't their statement, but that of the big boys.

[strongy]

Guys i hate to admit it but i was on a dredge that took 10 odd million tons of sand from the middle banks back in the 80`s for the airport upgrade back then. I am certainly no expert and i don`t support enviromental carnage but it seemed to have minimal effect on the sea bed landscape , oh it did change it, you can`t take 10 million tons without changing the contour of the seabed but the EAST channel shipping lane was ok and so was the Main channel . As for the fish and crabs etc ,we would take 8000 tons at a time to bulwer island and open the doors on the bottom of the ship and the sand would just drop out and you would rarely see fish or crabs float up . I`m not saying this is ok just saying it like it was.

[robersl]

also say it will save travell time for big ships to brisbane port as they are straightning the main channell by doing this as well

[dazza]

hi all,
i attended a forum yesterday to discuss the proposal and basically float it in the public arena.
was very interesting to hear the other side of the argument from some very informed members of the public ie: erosion issues etc.
of course the brisbane port authority in their studies concluded that there will be minimal impact.
the summary findings relating to fishing said there will be minimal impact to rec fishing- remember this is a 15 year project, minimal impact for 15 years :-/ :-/.
have a look at the maps, particularly the one in saturdays paper- bloody big triangle of the mining area out the front of tangalooma south
the epa said the dpi&f did the studies into impacts on fishing- they couldn't tell us what research was done on the impacts to the turtles that congregate on a bit of reef up near the spitfire banks. (there are plenty of them, a spanner craber moves from this area about this time every year because of the damage turtles cause to his dillies ripping bait bags open etc and the obvious danger to the turtles from his gear) or the impact the sedement plume will have on the same small system that seems to be a juvinile red emperor ground. the epa guy's looked pretty confused when these issues were raised. only reference to fishing was the trawlers in their summary document, and that it would have "minimal impact" on rec fishing. the epa guy's said that underwater camera studies of the area were done and all they saw was sand (guess depends where you look and what you want to see :-[ :-[), they had no idea that there are coffee rock reef systems very close to the proposed mining site in the spitfire channell. i know fron my own records it is obviously a spawning groung at times and also holds many varied species, wonder how they like swimming in dirty water >:( >:(
i could go on for hours, sorry about the long post.
public submissions close in early december, 30 days is plenty of time to digest a 600 page document and write a submission, what a joke.
cheers
dazza