Straits to pursue Yannarie appeal

Straits Salt Pty Ltd has come out with all guns blazing in its appeal against the Environmental Protection Authority after its $200 million Yannarie Solar salt project on the Exmouth Gulf was knocked back.

Straits has revised upwards the grounds of appeal from 72 to 77, 24 of which centre around what the company calls an 'abuse of process' and the remainder regarding technical issues.

The appeal document presented to the appeals convener, obtained by WA Business News, asserts that: "The environmental assessment of the project has been subject to a systematic abuse of process from its inception in 2004.

"Private anecdotal conversations between EPA/DEC staff and Straits personnel/consultants at all levels, highlight a widespread EPA/DEC intention to resist the project so that it was not assessed on its merits."

Straits project manager James Barrie said while the company always expected it would go to an appeals process, the strong rejection of its application had come as something of a shock.

In an unusual move, the EPA did not recommend any conditions be applied to the proposal, on the grounds that it posed unacceptably high risks of environmental harm to a critical environmental asset.

It said the proposal was 'fundamentally in the wrong place', with the whole of the east coast of Exmouth Gulf listed as a wetland of national importance.

"The proponent has not been able to demonstrate to the EPA that the environmental values of the area could be maintained with a high degree of certainty, nor that the risks to those values would be acceptably low in the long term," the report says.

Straits has spent five years and more than $11 million in the approvals process, and says it has complied with the EPA's repeated requests to verify its studies.

In its appeal, the company says the description of the east Exmouth Gulf as a wetland of national importance is not compatible with the area also having been set aside as a ministerial reserve for salt production.

Straits has also questioned why the EPA set the level of assessment at Environmental Review and Management Program and not at a Project Unlikely to be Environmentally Accepted level, which would have given immediate notice that the proposal was environmentally unacceptable.

That decision was appealed by the Conservation Council of WA, which claimed the project should undergo a PUEA.

The appeal was subsequently dismissed.

Mr Barrie said the company should have been informed that the project site was 'fundamentally in the wrong place' when the scoping document was assessed, which could have influenced the company's decision to spend time and money.

"The test of whether or not it had a fatal flaw was done four years ago," he said.

"We thought it's a high level of assessment, that's consistent with what people's expectations are. We know that we're going to have to spend a lot of money, but we'll still go ahead with it, we've got a fair chance, providing we prove it's environmentally acceptable."

Straits has also claimed it was denied the opportunity to be heard in relation to EPA's concerns regarding the economic viability of the bitterns management strategy proposed.

The company said it planned to do a full resource recovery from bitterns (waste from the production process) through further salt recovery and extracting other marketable by-products such as potash and magnesium sulphate (Epsom salts).

Lobby group Halt the Salt spokesperson and Conservation Council of WA biodiversity conservation officer, Nic Dunlop, said the government needed to clarify the status of the area as a conservation zone to avoid sending mixed signals to potential developers, which see it as a ministerial reserve for salt production.

"There's been a lack of planning across government as a whole and a lack of integration," he said.

"Government has had several years to provide protection to that area. Successive state governments have not acted."

The decision is the most recent example of the EPA opposing a major industrial project in an area of high environmental sensitivity or with high biodiversity value.

In 2006, the Gorgon project was also knocked back by the EPA on the basis the project was environmentally unacceptable.

But unlike the salt project, the EPA did recommend a series of stringent conditions be applied, after the government indicated the project was likely to get the go-ahead regardless because of its value to the state.

The final decision on the Yannarie Salt project now rests with the environment minister; and with the government currently in caretaker mode it could be months before a final decision is made.

The EPA declined to comment, saying it did not want to be seen to influence the appeal process.