http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/business/story/3236954p-3747981c.html

As 10,000 jobs have reportedly been shed in the forest industry over the last year in Canada, focus turns to the “emerging Asian and South American” industries.

How can our so called “industrial museum” pulp mill proposal come close to competing with the low cost high volume production of emerging economies?

I assume the “great land giveaway” and a cheap and nasty pulp mill will combine to offset South America’s 7 year eucalypt rotation and China’s cheap labour market. It seems to be the only way that the proponent will be able to even come close to being competitive.

With the release of the RPDC’s IIS (The Examiner 29/12/05) heralding comment on air emissions within a 55km radius of the proposed pulp mill and the CSIRO confirming such smells to be inhaled as “burning rubber, rotten egg gas and rotten cabbage” it seems that Launceston could well become one of the worst polluted cities in the developed world.

I didn’t come to Tasmania to breathe toxic gases. Neither did my children. Neither do the tourists.

Your choice Tasmania.

Serfs to the overlords of Industry or a future of clean air and water.

Cheers,

Dave

So you would like a job in an ECF pulp mill?
Help yourself; I am not in the queue.

This is from a document produced by the RPDC in March 2005 and yet the proponent says that ECF is better than TCF.
I guess it is if you don’t mind cancer.

“The one area of difference between ECF and TCF that may lead to differing cancer risks relates to organochlorines. These are produced during the chemical stage of pulping in ECF mills, but do not occur in significant quantities in TCF processes.

Organochlorines are released into the atmospheric and waste water environment, so low-level worker exposure is not uncommon. Worker exposure may be greater dermally than via inhalation.

Organochlorines (mainly dioxins) have been associated with a wide range of health effects. The only definite adverse health effect arising from dioxin exposure is chloracne (a skin disorder characterised by the occurrence of pustules, commonly on the face and neck), but there is strong evidence linking exposure to soft tissue sarcoma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma”.

The RPDC are busy conning us again.

The Forest Practices Code is not being enforced.

Our biodiversity is being destroyed enmasse daily.

Gunns Ltd burnoffs - with smoke that literally chokes for a 100 kilometres - is exempt from the provisions of EMPCA.

Aerial pesticide sprayings by Gunns Ltd and other ‘forest’ companies are subject to fraudulent ‘risk assessments’ and dishonest assertions of public safety.

The list could go on.

Now how do we boot out the fraudsters in the Resource Planning and Development Committee and set up a genuinely independent and thoughtful body that WILL protect human health and the environment?