COASTAL ACTION Geography Action Week - 1998

Dredging sludge in Corio Bay

Corio Bay, Victoria, Australia

The Age (7 August 1997) reported a complaint by the Australian Conservation Foundation that channel dredging had contaminated about 400 hectares of the seabed of Corio Bay.

A spokesman for the Australian Conservation Foundation, Mr Alistair Mailer, said the program should not resume until the contamination problem had been fixed.

"The contaminated sediment is being spread around Corio Bay covering three times the area agreed to by the original environmental committee. We would argue that they can't continue to dump further contaminated spoil into the inner harbor and it is unacceptable to take it into the outer harbor," he said.

After years of industrial effluent being poured into Corio Bay, the sea floor was contaminated with hydrocarbons and heavy metals, including cadmium, Mr Mailer said.

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The sediment should only have covered 150 hectares, under the original EPA permit, but it now covered 400 hectares, he said.

An EPA spokeswoman said a pollution abatement notice had been issued to the dredging contractor, Van Oord ACZ on 9 July, but dredging could continue. Data on the effect of dredging were being reviewed and the contractor had lodged an appeal to the notice in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

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