Botany Bay and Catchment Alliance

The following article is republished from the Macarthur Advertiser for the information of members living beyond the paper’s circulation area.

25 Mar, 2012 02:24 PM

BARRY O’Farrell declared bushland on the edge of Campbelltown the Dharawal National Park yesterday.

Enjoy this special feature written by long-time Dharawal campaigner and secretary of the Georges River Environmental Alliance, Sharyn Cullis, on why today’s announcement is so important.

A NEW national park to be called Dharawal, on Sydney’s southern edge will, quite remarkably, save an area that would otherwise become the collateral damage of a huge coal mining project by one of the world’s largest resource companies, BHP Billiton.

Dharawal is 6000 hectares of rugged gorge and swamp country sitting silently on Sydney’s back doorstep. It was, for so long, under the public radar. It is the unspoilt space south of Sutherland, west of Wollongong, and east of Campbelltown and Appin that could have been damaged and lost before it was properly known and loved.

It is a nature’s own wet and wild theme park with cool, deep swimming holes and bubbling, natural spa pools. Beautiful creeks make it an ideal place for summer water play. Other nearby national parks are virtually bursting at the seams on busy weekends and show the wear and tear of being loved and used too much. In our ever-growing and recreationally insatiable city, it is the next national park we have to have.

But national parks aren’t just about people. Dharawal has great nature conservation values, a rich store of Aboriginal rock art and is the vital, clean headwaters of the Georges River; an off-set against the downstream urban muck that would otherwise ruin it, in a catchment of more than a million people.

The BHP threat was a 30-year expansion plan of their coal mining operation. It consisted of a maze of 136 new longwall mines under 220 square kilometres of the landscape. Their own environmental assessment identified 47 streams and 55 swamps at risk, either in the Dharawal or hidden away in the drinking water catchments of the Woronora and Cataract dams.

A mountain of reports detailed the likely catastrophic destruction.

It could not be denied in any case. The surrounding landscape is littered with longwall mining environmental casualties: the Cataract and Georges Rivers and Waratah Rivulet have been plagued by subsidence-related impacts; shattered riverbeds, drained pools and water charged with both methane and bright orange iron oxide scum.

The fight to save Dharawal was instigated by a band of bushwalkers and nature lovers, without real resources other than commitment, energy and their ability to network, research and argue. Some had been watching over Dharawal for a long time.

They successfully resisted a proposal to dam O’Hares Creek for a coal washery in the 1980s. It is now set to be the new park centrepiece.

In 1993, Bob Carr, then aspiring to be the next premier of NSW, promised a Dharawal National Park. The best he could do in office was reserve it at the surface, with BHP’s mining rights beneath remaining intact, to be activated in the vague future.

The future arrived in 2009. With great irony, it was the audaciousness and mind-boggling scale of the 2009 BHP mining project that created a catalyst for its salvation.

Suddenly it was urgent that the activists stopped keeping Dharawal a secret. The wider public needed to be alerted and engaged. The media demonstrated itself to be what we expect of it to report this intriguing story. Dharawal captured attention and the controversy around its future became a matter of rising political interest.

That snowballing political and media interest meant councils too came out in opposition to the BHP plan. A state election was looming and the aspiring Liberal candidates for the surrounding marginal seats flanked Barry O’Farrell as he made his crucially timed national park promise in January 2011.

BBaCA congratulates the Environmentalists, lead by Sharyn Cullis, who have worked so hard for this outcome. The Premier and his environment minister and local state members who pursued the issue and brought is to fruit are also congratulated..

Botany Bay and Catchment Alliance has membership on various Orica Botany Community Committees. Recently an Environmental Forum was held at which a portion of presentation related to Orica Botany. Lynda Newnam, a North Botany Bay activist with long membership of Orica Community groups was one of the speakers. Find below audio and powerpoints from the EcoForum.

Jason Prior   http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/audio/e181.mp3       slides:  http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/audio/e190.mp3
 
Ian Bookman (Thiess)   http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/audio/e190.mp3    (no slides)
 
James Stening    http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/audio/e250.mp3     slides  http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/powerpoints/e250.pdf
 
Lynda  Newnam     http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/audio/e249.mp3   slides  http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/powerpoints/e249.pdf
 
Barbara Campany    http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/audio/e251.mp3   slides  http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/powerpoints/e251.pdf
 
Mitzi Bolton  http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/audio/e267.mp3   slides  http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/powerpoints/e267.pdf
 
Garry Smith   http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/audio/e266.mp3   slides  http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/powerpoints/e266.pdf
 
Workshop  http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/powerpoints/e227.pdf  – no audio so far
 
Sustainable Cities with Brian Howe.  http://www.ecoforum.net.au/2012/audio/e253.mp3

Excitement is building in our campaign to achieve World Heritage Listing of the “Royal Reserves” – that is, the trio of Royal National Park and its adjacent Heathcote National Park and Garawarra State Recreation Area.

The immediate stimulus comes from completion of the draft of our comprehensive Mosley Report, drafted by Dr Geoff Mosley, Australia’s leading authority on national parks.

We have at once circulated it to many individuals and groups for review and comment, and we’ve already received excellent responses, including suggestions for improvement.

Basic to the argument we must present to the Commonwealth Government (and through it to the United Nations agency UNESCO) will be our coverage of the cultural international values of the Royal Reserves, on top of the already well established features of the natural environment.

Cultural? That is, the changes to the three Reserves brought about since the 1860s and 1870s by impacts from public re-creation (from picnicking to fitness and health) and Park management. Such a study will throw light on the wider Australian national park movement; and that in turn will have significance for the worldwide national parks movement.

In tracing these cultural influences, three examples spring to mind.

First was of course the establishment of Royal in 1879 as the world’s first “national park”, thus termed, remarkably a national park wholly within a city (the addition of “Royal” did not come till 1955).

Second was the early concentration of park management on nature conservation, over other possible uses.

Third was the realisation that this first national park could not stand alone – so it has contributed to the push for national parks (and wilderness reserves) in every state.

In the three examples, the developments at RNP were representative of the best worldwide changes of attitude to the natural environment.

For the rest, our final Report will detail the outstanding values of our natural environment, its biogeodiversity and its beauty/aesthetics. By the biogeoheritage we mean the Park’s incredibly numerous life-forms (species), and its many soils and rocks, and the host of interactions among them – considerations that link us to the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and the megadiversity of the whole Sydney Basin.

Dr Mosley has supplied a list of management recommendations aimed at achieving better conservation of the world heritage values of the Royal Reserves, and at maintaining their integrity as required by UNESCO. Our spokesperson Bob Crombie has welcomed the suggestions: “We will discuss them in future articles”, he says.

Bob Walshe, Chairman, First National Park, ph 9528 0444

For more information:  www.firstnationalpark.org.au/

THESE are the shocking images that have provoked an overwhelming response of disgust from our readers.

Tonnes of waste from engines to filing cabinets and thousands of plastic bottles lines the banks of the Cooks River through Canterbury, Campsie, Hurlstone Park and Earlwood.

The Express visited three sites along this short stretch of river at Picken Oval, Croydon Park; Lees Park, Ashbury and the renowned “PET cemetery’’ of Tasker Park, Canterbury, where thousands of plastic bottles have been collected in the mangroves.

The litter is an environmental shame but it reveals only what is visible to the naked eye.

The invisible threat of fecal contamination and dangerous levels of E.coli is the river’s biggest enemy.

Test results released by the Cooks River Valley Association reveal E.coli levels 60 times higher than those acceptable for human contact or swimming, and nine times higher than acceptable for secondary contact, such as boating. (more…)

The following figures were given on a daily basis for beaches within the Botany Bay and Georges River for the three weeks commencing Sunday 22/01/2012. The pollution is said to be caused by stormwater overflow from various land sources. A high percentage is from sewerage outflows.

* Rainfall data has been used to predict the likelihood of bacterial contamination at swimming sites in Botany Bay and lower Georges River. When pollution is likely, swimmers may be at increased risk of contracting illness and swimming at these sites should be avoided.

Statistics from “Beachwatch” website, NSW Department of Environment and Heritage