Western Port Your guide to what’s on this weekend for peninsula families
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Tuesday 1 December 2015
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Marching to end domestic violence MARCHERS were in step along High St, Hastings, last week in support of the campaign to end domestic violence. Story, pictures Page 7 Picture: Yanni
Call for compo if port expands Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au A BUSINESS case for expanding the Port of Hastings should include compensation the owners of property affected by dredging in the bay. Experts estimate 24 million cubic metres of spoil will be dredged from alongside wharfs and in shipping channels, severely affecting Western Port’s
marine environment and increasing coastal erosion. The call to establish a compensation fund was included in a submission by the Preserve Western Port Action Group (PWPAG) to a select committee hearing into the state government’s proposed leasing of the Port of Melbourne. Funding for the government’s plan to reduce the number of rail level crossings is expected to come from the 50-year lease, which effectively rules
out development of a container port at Hastings. PWPAG chairman Jeff Nottle said any business case for expanding the port at Hastings “needs to include all the costs that impact on the region”. These impacts included “increased erosion and sediment flows arising from the dredging in a very high tidal flow environment” and the acceleration of erosion “particularly in the north of the bay and on the north shore
of Phillip Island”. Mr Nottle said the Shire of Bass had recognised the “just how much of Western Port is at risk of inundation or erosion - and in some cases both - by climate change induced storm surges and sea level rises” by endorsing a planning scheme amendment on Land Subject to Inundation Overlays (C82). Mr Nottle said the dredging would make things worse than what was being predicted.
Harcourts
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Estimates of the dredging required for an expanded port came from Victoria University’s supply chain institute while effects on the ecology and erosion came from “one of Australia’s leading geomorphologists Associate Professor David Kennedy of the University of Melbourne”, who had considered the Victoria University findings and the Western Port Local Coastal Hazard Assessment reports. Continued Page 9
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