Anti-dam activists blast Costa with the truth

Media release
The Wilderness Society Sydney Inc
22 July 2010

The Wilderness Society's Mal Fisher reads from one of the reports. Photo: Peter Cooper

In response to Minister Costa’s assertion that "There's been no evidence whatsoever, that has come to me, as to why we should not build this (the Tillegra) dam."* activists from the Wilderness Society have today used a public address system to read the reasons to him, while outside his ministerial offices in Governor Macquarie Tower.

Activists read from reports prepared by the Minister’s own department and from an independent report by The Institute for Sustainable Futures, commissioned by the Wilderness Society.

The dam is proposed for the Williams River, near Newcastle, and would be as big as Sydney Harbour, destroying 21 kilometres of precious natural riverine environment with very healthy platypus populations. It would drown over 2,000 hectares of irreplaceable agricultural land.

The reports demonstrate that the dam is not needed to secure water supplies and that the reduced flows to the Hunter Estuary and its Ramsar listed wetland, Kooragang Island, are likely to lead to the ecological collapse of the Williams River system.

They show that, with lower water consumption and increased supplies, drought security was at a 30 year high, that alternatives would cost hundreds of million less, and show the Tillegra Dam project be abandoned.

“The proposed dam would be an economic, environmental and social disaster,” said Felicity Wade, NSW Campaigns Manager for the Wilderness Society. “Minister Costa must acknowledge that there is no case for the dam being built and immediately scrap the project”

Read the reports at http://www.wilderness.org.au/articles/further-reading