The Guardian 28 November, 2007
Pesticide in Tassie rivers
The Tasmanian Greens said last week that in a desperate attempt to bury the fact that there were five pesticide detections in the latest round of testing for Tasmania’s rivers, the Paul Lennon Labor Government has waited until the dying moments of the last state parliamentary sitting (last Friday) and the last moments of the federal election campaign before releasing the results. This is despite the tests being conducted a month ago.
Greens Shadow Water spokesperson, Tim Morris MHA, has called on the Premier to intervene and demand that the Primary Industries and Water Minister, David Llewellyn, conducts a thorough investigation to identify the source of this unacceptable contamination, and to develop a comprehensive state-wide strategy aimed at protecting Tasmania’s waterways from chemical contamination. Also that the Minister implements chemical trespass provisions to ensure that those responsible for chemical contamination are identified and prosecuted.
According to the results available on the Department’s website both the pesticides Simazine and MCPA have been detected in three samples from the Macquarie River in the Northern Midlands, with MCPA also being detected in the Jordan and Don Rivers.
"Once again Simazine has been detected above the Guideline Value in the Macquarie River, upstream of the Elizabeth River junction, which means that the Department of Primary Industries and Water must do follow-up investigations to determine the source of the ongoing contamination and ensure that whoever has done this is brought to account, publicly", Mr Morris said.
"Minister Llewellyn’s press release of yesterday disagrees with the results put up on his Department’s website; the website shows MCPA being detected at 0.14 ppb in the Macquarie River downstream of the Elizabeth River junction, whilst the Minister’s statement claims that this reading is for Simazine, suggesting that it is from the same contamination as the other Macquarie river readings."
Mr Morris said the Minister must immediately correct the record; is he misleading the public or is his Department? "I suspect that the Minister is.
"Given that the Minister has said that all detections will be followed up by further testing, why is he refusing to publish the results of this subsequent testing on the Department’s website; perhaps he has something to hide?"
Testing has now been occurring on a quarterly basis in most of these rivers for three years and in nine of the 12 lots of sampling there were between one and five samples that tested positive for chemicals; in total 21 tests have shown contamination. Simazine and MCPA have been the most commonly detected chemicals with nine and seven detections respectively.
"Further analysis shows that the number of results recording contamination is getting twice as bad each year with three positive tests in 2005, six in 2006 and twelve in 2007.
"When the results of the Flood Monitoring Program are analysed, I find that three of the four rivers monitored have also shown contamination with the George River being contaminated on three separate occasions", Mr Morris said.
"This is an appalling list of results that demonstrate that the situation is out of control and yet Minister Llewellyn has done nothing to remedy the situation whereby his government is sitting on its hands whilst many Tasmanians continue to drink contaminated water.
"In his latest press release, Minister Llewellyn admits that the government does not have a strategy in place to stop this ongoing contamination. It is time that the Premier stepped in and acknowledged the extent of the problem and demanded that Minister Llewellyn moves to protect Tasmanians from these poisons, or at least accept a shred of responsibility after three years of increasing contamination", stated Mr Morris.