Australia’s long view

In addition to well publicised port expansion, many marine terminals and loading facilities are being constructed or planned along several strategic areas of the coast to service Australia’s growing mining and LNG sectors.

But it is different picture to that faced by ports in many other parts of the world. Australia’s need for deep berths and direct calls is being largely supported by its economic ability to take the long term view, and this ties in with a fairly robust environmental assessment process.

Greg Fisk of BMT WBM explains that “Although It’s a big outlay, many ports now get their Environmental Impact Assessment approvals in well ahead of time, and that can mean as long as fifteen years ahead.”

The smart ports have an environmental master plan in place – and it’s an investment in a future that looks fairly assured. “After all, an approved new channel and berth increases the value of the assets,” says Mr Fisk.

Recently the Port of Melbourne did, by all accounts, a very thorough job with an EIS on its channel deepening project. “They took a precautionary approach, even going to the lengths of bringing in a dredger for a trial. It was expensive but actually it left them able to demonstrate their plans to regulatory agencies and the community.”

The Aussie picture is also different to many industrialised areas because the impact assessments for reclamation and dredging works usually have to take on, not so much the possibility of moving contaminated material caused by industrial use, but the difficulties of turbidity caused by disturbing fine silts, muds and clays.

“The mud gets brought up into the water column in a plume, and if it drifts over a patch of marine flora, it can deprive it of light and smother it.” However, says Mr Fisk, there are a number of actions one can take to mitigate any damage, “and you do have the natural resilience of the tropical ecosystems on your side in this, as much of is has evolved to be able to survive severe coastal storms.”

One thing is too look at prevailing sea and wind conditions that might push the plume towards sensitive areas, but a better strategy is to create an effective buffer between the projects and sensitive spots like coral reefs early in the project planning process, says Mr Fisk.

Australia is blessed, not just with enormous resources to be mined, but also with space. This has meant there is a natural divide between many of the larger, specialised export terminals that deal with bulk export, and Australia’s cities. However, dust suppression, noise and other planning issues in the larger terminals, says Mr Fisk, “are still big issues that must be managed.”

And it has been supported by tight government policy. A recent example is the LNG precinct in Queensland where the government was proactive in keeping the terminals in an offshore location, eventually settling for industrial development on Curtis Island in Gladstone. “It wasn’t the cheapest option by any means,” explains Mr Fisk ”but taking into consideration the impact, it was the best overall for the operators, the community and the environment.”

However, where environmentally areas are unavoidably in the path of dredging or reclamation works, and then you are into either relocating or offsetting the habitat by creating another nearby.

Mr Fisk explains that fauna relocation is difficult, but is becoming a standard requirement. The walls get built and before finally closing the reclamation structure, there is an all out effort to move the dolphins, large fish and turtles before they get trapped. “The larger, migratory animals do very well,” says Mr Fisk, “but there is some doubt as to how the smaller fish and large crustaceans survive.” It’s hard not to have a mental picture of a shark waiting for lunch to be delivered from over the wall.

Australian regulators also now expect offsets actions, says Mr Fisk. With some habitats, this is a fairly straightforward task, so mangroves are often used, even where they are not the originally threatened community.

“Seagrass, for example, is particularly problematic. There’s many species but they all have one thing in common - it is actually very hard to grow it where it hasn’t already had an established history. So, if you can’t directly replace the habitat, you look back to creating mangroves and salt marshes to rebalance your environmental books.”

It’s a bit of a fudge, yes. But as Mr Fisk says, “While Australia is still lagging around 15 years behind the US in terms of use of environmental offsets, we are gaining ground in terms of best practice.” And there are bound to be more developments long term, since the long term view is what the port sector is bargaining on.