MEDIA RELEASE

The “Norske Skog Green Offsets Project” recently announced by the NSW Department of Water & Energy raises serious concerns, according to a statement released today by environmental and public water rights advocate Fair Water Use (Australia).

The project is an attempt to mitigate the effects of 1500 tonnes of salt which the Norwegian paper manufacturer is seeking permission to dump into the River Murray every year, enabling expansion of its paper-mill at Albury.

“Fair Water Use understands that, under the terms of the scheme, unspecified volumes of good-quality groundwater, the “blood bank” of the river in times of drought, are extracted from an aquifer underlying Billabong Creek, a tributary of the Murray. A proportion of this, also unspecified, is made available locally for watering stock and domestic use and whatever volume of fresh water remains is pumped into Billabong Creek itself.

The imputed “green offset” is ascertained by divining the amount of salt that might otherwise have entered Billabong Creek and thence the Murray – due to environmental salination resulting from land clearance and inappropriate irrigation practices; salt which may not in fact reach the River Murray at anticipated levels, particularly in the low rainfall future projected for the southern Murray-Darling Basin.  

The NSW Department of Water & Energy should explain to downstream communities, especially those whose public water supplies are already unfit to drink, with salinity levels around 1200 ecu, why, in the midst of the worst regional drought in record, it is giving consideration to a project which relies on an unproven salt mitigation scheme, the effectiveness of which will only be adequately tested during its five year “proof of concept” phase and apparently subsequent to the granting of a licence to Norske Skog allowing it to commence dumping its noxious waste.”