The article deserves better than to be ignored.
Let's hope the financial events of this week divert enough capital away for the thing for it to drown in its own sh-t.

What a load of rubbish.

The closest comparison to the Tamar valley would be the pulp and paper mill built in Tumut in 2000.

The economy and facilities are now booming in a town that was slowly dying.

The reason that no one from the greens ever draws a comparison with that plant is that it is also a modern plant that runs with almost no effluent or pollution. The comparisons are always made with plants 40+ years old.

Give it a break.

Peter Henning

I'm not all that au fait with environmental regulation in Tasmania.

"It then provides for conditions to be imposed on the mill and gives regulators the power to enforce the conditions as if they were made under another Act,"

Over my way, regulators make sure that the conditions of licence are very few and not too burdensome on the polluter - oh yes indeed!

So when the big end of town spews out bucket loads and the department receives a few community objections, appellants are simply advised that the objections are irrelevant because they are not in the conditions of licence and are therefore, unenforceable.

And who cares when the emissions exceed international guidelines? Guidelines aren't enforceable either!

Regulators are also very skilled at manipulating excessively high stack emission levels to "ambient" readings by their own "you beaut" computer modelling. Clearly they don't give a stuff about the troposphere or on whose dinner plate a cup full of dioxins may settle.

One previous Environment Minister, after community outrage, instructed the Department of Environment to enforce a capping of hazardous emissions on a big polluter, however, the senior bureaucrats in her Department ignored her instructions. Oh well, at least we have her apologies in writing.

Don't like your chances Mate - profits before people and all that stuff.

These bureaucratic eco-vandals operate by smoke and mirrors and we sheeple are collateral damage - cannon fodder - aye that's for sure!

By the way, spare a thought for the poor buggers in Kwinana:

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:RRe9rnNjuYcJ:www.sprol.com/%3Fp%3D323+kwinana+pollution&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=au&lr=lang_en

What is interesting about this debate is that it is not just the 'deep greens' or 'greenies' who have taken on the Gunn's Pulp Mill. Business people, their employees and the townsfolk of the Tamar Valley who rely on tourism and who wish to protect the health of their community from emissions, joined forces with Greenies in an effort to stop the pulp mill from going ahead.

Anyone who believes that there will be no toxic effluent into Bass Strait from this mill or that there will be no ill-effects on biodiversity from logging of old growth forests or risk to the health of locals is kidding themselves.

I am not at all surprised that there are built-in protections in the legislation for Gunn's and their contractors. This is just further evidence of the corruption and shenanigans that this debate has seen from its inception.

Forcing people to resign from the Resource Planning and Development Commission after raising concerns about the failure to meet assessment guidelines, fast-tracking approval outside the parliamentary process when Gunn's was found to be non-compliant and the bribery charge against one of the Gunn's managers (can't remember who)are just some examples.

Cronyism, corruption and greed in all their glorious forms from beginning to end. Why has no federal politician from either major party bought Gunns and the Lennon Government to account for these actions?

Pelican - No manager of Gunns has ever been convicted of bribery.

Just shows how shallow your argument is. You are clutching at straws to strengthen your argument.

If you think bribery does not exist "because there are no convictions" you are *extremely* naive. This is a general point that applies to any system in our society.

OK Steel let me rephrase to make it easier for you to understand. No manager of Gunns (past or present) has ever had a bribery charge made against them, whether convicted or not.

It is amazing how the greens try and claim the high ground while telling bald faced lies.

In a decade of running at the permissable pollution levels the plant will produce about 1 teaspoon full of dioxins.

This will be of course unmeasureable and a calculated value only, mostly because as dioxins actually exist naturally, the background level of dioxins will be thousands of times higher.

Something like dumping salt into the sea.

If the Gunns mill is not built, not one tree will be spared as the contract will simply cut them down and sell them as chips to be made into paper by some one else with probably less pollution control.

If Gunns mill is stopped, the people in the Tamar valley lose, the country loses and the environment loses.

I also notice that no one has bothered to try and challenge me on the Tumut comparison as it would expose their double standards.

Re the Tumut comparison - there are large eucalyptus plantations in the Tumut area (the mill uses 90% trees sourced from hardwood plantations). There are so many plantations being established that communities south of Tumut have been concerned about loss of population from forestry companies buying up farms and using the former farmland to establish new plantations.
My understanding of the Tasmanian situation is that ALL the timber which would be fed into the proposed Tamar pulp mill is old growth native timber.
Just a few points: 1) we need trees as carbon sinks and for the health of the environment generally (biodiversity etc) 2) making paper out of trees is incredibly wasteful, inefficient and energy-intensive. There are large numbers of plants (eg. flax, banna grass, rice) which have short growth cycles from which paper can be made. Paper can also be made from recycled clothing. Cloth-based paper is the highest quality paper there is. Acidic wood pulp paper falls apart within 50 years (ask any archivist). 3) Gunns probably haven't bribed any politicians - but there is the matter of influence. $53,000 may buy a lot of influence with a political party. See article here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/02/01/1838140.htm

Johnj

Thanks for proving my point.

Your comments on Tumut mill are so hopelessly inaccurate that as with most of the facts the green movement rely on it would appear to be mostly fabricated.

You said: "the mill uses 90% trees sourced from hardwood plantations"

Reality: The mill uses 100% softwood (pine) 40% of which is from off cuts of the saw mills.

The existing state forests have sufficient timber not only for the existing mill but also for the expansion which will nearly double the output. As the paper mill uses the young pine trees which are thinned out after 9 years to allow larger growth in others (high value), any new plantation is only viable if the majority of the wood goes to a saw mill.

The building of the Gunns mill won't result in one more tree being cut down compared to if it wasn't built. The difference is whether the chips are made into pulp in Australia or overseas.

Acidic paper hasn't been made for many decades, and as most paper is for packaging it would have little influence on the archivists.

Cloth based paper is the most expensive, not the best. Similarily the other plant products have been used for making paper, but the economics would at triple the cost the fibre.

Until the green movement bases its statements on facts rather than fantasy, they cannot be taken seriously.

JohnJ

You really need to think through what you are saying and divorce yourself from your own prejudices when considering alernatives. It is a noble of you to offer to produce paper from different crops. But just think it through. If you used a crop such as rice or flax, how much cleared land would you require? How much chemicals would you need to pump into the system to allow these crops to survive ech year?

I am interested in your proof that making paper from trees is incredibly wasteful, inefficient and energy-intensive. For a start you don't have to have cleared land. Also, when you chop down a tree you don't release carbon from the tree. It stays with the wood product. And surprise surprise, it grows back again on its own accord. It is what is called renewable.

Then you claim Gunns buys influence with the governments. Again think this through. If Gunns did this to buy influence then it is money wasted as successive Govenments (State and Federal) have locked up over 1 million hectares of the most productive forests in Tasmania since 1985. Why would you bother donating money to influence governments when they totally ignore you and undermine your business?