Alex Bainbridge, Hobart
The Tasmanian Labor government has spent $30,000 organising a bus to tour the state to bolster support for Gunns' new pulp mill. Gunns Limited is Australia's largest woodchipper and the company behind the lawsuit against 20 environmental activists and organisations.
Gunns made its first detailed announcement about its proposed new pulp mill on February 24, including its location in Bell Bay near Launceston.
The new mill will be neither chlorine-free nor "closed loop", which it would need to be for the Tasmanian Greens to support it.
Previously, Gunns had raised expectations that its pulp mill would be chlorine-free. In a June 2004 Hobart Mercury article, Gunns managing director John Gay wrote that the company would establish "Australia's first total chlorine-free kraft pulp mill — if proved viable".
Now Gay is simply saying that the pulp mill will be built to standards set by the state's resource planning and development commission.
Environmentalists are also opposing the new pulp mill because the above preconditions were not met, because the location will add to air pollution problems in the Tamar Valley and because of the massive volume of old-growth forest that will be fed to the mill as woodchips.
In addition, Greens leader Peg Putt told the February 28 Greenweek newsletter that "water will turn into a big bun fight as Gunns tries to get access to massive volumes ahead of other users and the environment".
"And the smash and grab raid on the remaining forests of the north-east could result in the local extinction of the wedge-tailed eagle as predicted in a leaked scientific report released by the Wilderness Society late last year", Putt said.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, March 9, 2005.
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