The Guardian 24 August, 2005
New threats to historic Botany Bay
Peter Mac
The NSW government’s decision to build a seawater desalination plant at Kurnell on the southern side of Botany Bay has attracted severe criticism.
The government maintains that the plant is crucial to avoid water shortages within Sydney. However, others disagree. More than a thousand local residents and others recently held a protest at Kurnell over the desalination proposal, which was chosen over the more modest and far-sighted alternative of recycling the city’s waste water.
Critics of the proposal point out that the plant would raise noise and traffic problems for local residents and visitors, would effectively poison a large area of the Bay’s waters, would endanger wildlife at the Landing Place, and would consume huge amounts of electricity from the State’s coal-fired power stations, polluting the atmosphere.
The plant would be sited alongside the huge Caltex oil refinery, within the industrial area adjacent to the Captain Cook Landing Place Historic Site and the tiny village of Kurnell.
The NSW Labor government chose Kurnell as the plant site without consulting local communities or councils. The (then) Minister for Utilities, Frank Sartor, later declared huffily that the government had considered 14 alternative sites, and couldn’t possibly consult with 14 different communities prior to making a decision.
He subsequently announced: "Now that we’ve got a preferred site, now is the time to appropriately set up … a consultative committee with residents."
However, this token procedure won’t sway the government, which is determined to ram the project through. It has decided to declare the plant a "critical infrastructure" project, which would therefore not require the normal local government planning and assessment process.
Ignoring the existence of the Kurnell residents, the (then) Planning Minister Craig Knowles declared that the plant would not affect residents, because "No-one lives in this area".
Without the slightest acknowledgement that he was discussing issues of major importance for Botany Bay, he added: "There’s an oil refinery, there is a carbon black factory 200 metres down the road, there is a brickworks across the road, we are under the flight path. The flight path would preclude anyone from living there."
And in a nutshell, that just about sums up the problems that have come to plague the area over the last two centuries.
Botany Bay is of primary cultural significance for Australia. The park around the Landing Site has (so far) been preserved essentially in its natural pre-1788 condition. It forms a unique haven for nomadic birds, some of which fly from as far away as Siberia on their annual pilgrimages, and all of which are protected by international covenants to which Australia is a signatory.
Botanist Joseph Banks, who accompanied James Cook on the Endeavour exploration voyage, and landed at Botany Bay with him, wrote glowing if exaggerated reports about its potential to support a new colony.
These reports later helped to convince the British government that the area should be chosen as a penal colony rather than rival sites in Africa and elsewhere. (Banks’ report on the low population density of aboriginal people in the area, and their meagre defences, also had a highly significant influence on the choice.)
That decision, made during the birth of the industrial revolution, led in time to replacement of primitive communism by a modern, industrialised capitalist economy on the Australian mainland.
The Bay was also the site of initial anchorage of the "First Fleet", the first known landing by Europeans intent on establishing a permanent settlement. And in an eerie way, many of the major problems of Australia’s modern history, particularly those involving dispossession and eviction of indigenous people, urbanisation, industrial development and protection of areas of great natural and cultural significance, are written in the history of the Bay.
Famed in folk song as the ultimate destination for transported convicts, Botany Bay later became the site of some of Australia’s first secondary industries, and since then has been subject to major industrial development. On its northern and southern shores it now hosts shipping terminals and loading facilities, runway extensions from Australia’s busiest airport, major chemical and petrochemical storage industries, oil refineries and a host of smaller industrial sites.
Botany Bay’s residential areas are sandwiched between these bloated industrial enclaves. The area’s natural attributes are preserved only on the headlands and some small promontories. If one current development proposals is accepted, the last tiny beach on the northern shoreline will soon be obliterated by extensions to the shipping facilities.
Given the huge threats which have been posed to the city by the Howard government’s reckless foreign policy and subservience to US interests, Botany Bay is now a planner’s nightmare. The co-location of a major airport with the biggest petrochemical complex in the southern hemisphere constitutes a stunning temptation for terrorist attack.
A logical response to this would be for the Bay’s major industries to be relocated. However, the issues of protecting the city and preserving the Bay’s historic or natural significance have cut no ice with the NSW government. Apparently fixated in favour of major site developments, they have ridiculed the idea of simply providing new pipes and purification equipment for recycling, and remain determined to build the huge desalination plant.
A water economist, Dr John Marsden, commented "Desalination is a very costly exercise in terms of energy, and therefore in terms of greenhouse emissions … this plant is likely to cost $1.5 to $2 billion."
Criticism has also come from the Prime Minister. Although his comments were loaded with environmental hypocrisy, he correctly stated, "… desalination is expensive. It’s also energy intensive. I would hope that all of the recycling options are fully explored. I do worry that the New South Wales Government has been a little too ready to dismiss almost out of hand the options of recycling, and I’m not convinced that the case for preferring desalination has been strongly enough made."
Howard’s press secretary, Gary Nairn, added "There is so much that Sydney could do as far as recycling and re-use is concerned, and not to be investing in infrastructure for recycling and re-use and going straight into desalination I think is extremely irresponsible and environmentally unfriendly."
Others have pointed out that the plant would dump thousands of litres of hot, thick brine into the Bay waters every day, which would ruin marine wildlife and spoil the local beaches for recreation purposes.
Local resident, Tracey Scott, deserves the last word. She said: "It’s disgusting. Kurnell was the birthplace of modern Australia. The government’s got no regard for that whatsoever."