Legal challenge to pulp mill

SUE NEALES
Chief reporter

May 18, 2007 12:00am

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A LEGAL challenge by environmental groups could scuttle Gunns' controversial $1.5 billion pulp mill.

The Wilderness Society has launched Federal Court action to halt the Federal Government's environmental assessment of the planned pulp mill project near Launceston.

If Federal Government approval for the Bell Bay pulp mill is delayed beyond August by the legal challenge, Gunns has indicated its proposal could be axed.

The landmark legal action, filed yesterday morning in Hobart's Federal Court, names Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Gunns as respondents to the case.

The Wilderness Society sees the legal case as equal in environmental importance to Australia as earlier historic campaigns to stop the Franklin River from being dammed and Lake Pedder from being flooded.

It will seek an interim injunction on May 31 to suspend the Government's assessment of the pulp mill project under federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation laws from proceeding or its final decision being announced.

The Wilderness Society's Tasmanian campaign manager, Geoff Law, says the "fast-track" and narrow federal assessment of the Gunns pulp mill announced by Mr Turnbull two weeks ago breaks national environmental laws.

Mr Turnbull and Gunns executive chairman John Gay declined to comment yesterday.

But federal Forestry Minister Eric Abetz labelled it a damaging and cynical action that could jeopardise Tasmania's biggest investment project.

The federal inquiry confines the scope of the Commonwealth assessment of the mill's environmental impact to any threatened species living or growing on the mill site, migratory birds and the marine environment of Bass Strait.

Mr Law said it was a disgrace the Government would not review the impact of the pulp mill _ which will consume more than four million tonnes of wood a year _ on Tasmania's native forests, forest wildlife and water resources.

Most of the timber for the pulp mill in at least its first five years of operation will be logged from Tasmania's native forests, mainly in the northeast of the state.

"We are not going to sit back and allow that to occur; we expected better of Mr Turnbull," Mr Law said.

"We believe national environmental laws do not allow that situation to arise where the massive appetite of this pulp mill for forests is not taken into account."

Gunns counters that within eight years 80 per cent of timber to be pulped will come from plantations.

The Government has said it does not need to consider the pulp mill's impact on native forests because forestry activities are exempt from national environmental laws under the Regional Forests Agreement Act.

But the Wilderness Society believes the December 2006 Wielangta forest court ruling, that all forestry operations must consider endangered species, casts doubt on the assumption made by Mr Turnbull and his department that forest impact does not need to be included in its pulp mill assessment process.

In legal documents lodged yesterday, the Wilderness Society also contends it is illegal for a developer such as Gunns to reject an approved independent state-federal assessment process such as the former Resource Planning and Development Commission one, only to be offered a less rigorous alternative by the Federal Government.

The case is listed for Hobart's Federal Court on May 31 before Justice Shane Marshall, the same judge who ruled in favour of Australian Greens leader Bob Brown in the Wielangta logging case against Forestry Tasmania.

Gunns has previously said that unless its pulp mill is given the green light by August, with construction beginning in September, it will axe the project.