The Environmental Impact Statement on Hornsby Quarry was released in August with a closing date for submissions of 4 September 2015. STEP and the Geological Heritage Subcommittee of the NSW Division of the Geological Society of Australia have some concerns.

Prior to the state election in March, Matt Kean, the member for Hornsby, announced an agreement between Hornsby Council and the state and federal governments to share the financing of a plan to fill the void left by the Hornsby Quarry using spoil from the NorthConnex motorway tunnel. The filled void would then be converted to 40 ha of open space.

This seems to be an ideal solution. Hornsby and nearby suburbs have become a forest of apartment buildings. All these new residents need more recreational space close to public transport.

The filling process will take two to three years starting in early 2016. It will be a nightmare for the local community with up to 70 truck movements per hour entering and leaving the access point via Bridge Street, Monday to Friday (7 am to 6 pm) and Saturday (8 am to 1 pm). Mysteriously, the size of the open space has shrunk to 35 ha.

The EIS is the usual massive document – over 400 pages plus appendices. However there is a glaring omission that has been highlighted in the submission from the Geological Heritage Subcommittee of the NSW Division of the Geological Society of Australia (GSA) and STEP. This is consideration of the volcanic diatreme that has been excavated and exposed by the quarry.

As pointed out in the GSA submission:

… the significance of the geological phenomenon uniquely exposed in the quarry wall at the eastern end of the site has been overlooked and disregarded, leading to formulation of a plan for infilling the quarry which will largely obliterate this feature of state, national and arguably global significance.

The GSA argues that the benches cut into the eastern wall to a depth of 40 m must be retained clear of loose rock and spoil for ease of future access for researchers, students and the general public. The rocks and other materials in the diatreme provide information that is essential for an understanding of the creation of the Sydney Basin.

In summary the GSA states:

The existing report is inadequate, incorrect and appears to have been undertaken by consultants with limited (or perhaps no) geological knowledge. Furthermore, information readily available in the scientific literature has been ignored or misinterpreted.

The GSA strongly recommends that the geological aspects of the EIS should be revised with the assistance of a geoheritage specialist.

STEP is also concerned about the loss of more bushland. The bushland is acknowledged to be degraded but it contains tree species that are part of the habitat of the endangered Gang-gang Cockatoo. Some biodiversity offsets will be funded by the project but these usually involve the restoration of existing bushland that has been allowed to deteriorate, not the creation of new areas.

The report on the review of the 10/50 Vegetation Clearing Code of Practice was released in August. The NSW Government is implementing all 30 recommendations of the review. However the fundamental problem with the legislation remains. Residents of urban areas that are defined as bushfire prone land can chop down trees within 10 m of their house or attached structure without obtaining expert advice on whether this will reduce bushfire risk. This is the reason over 95% of the 3579 submissions received called for repeal of the legislation.

Prior to the introduction of the new code, residents had to obtain approval to remove vegetation for bushfire protection. In the process expert advice was provided on vegetation management by the local council or Rural Fire Service. The government claims that this was too much red tape and too costly.

Now residents are left on their own to assess their bushfire risk and it appears that often convenience and water views are more important.

Some of the faults of the legislation have been recognised. The fact there are 30 such faults is a damning indictment of the government in enacting such poor legislation that has already led to the destruction of over 5000 trees in the Sydney region alone, many of which were vital habitat for wildlife and not a bushfire risk.

Most of the amendments are to exclude areas that should have been recognised in the first place, for example:

• world heritage areas, Ramsar wetlands, national parks and nature reserves
• core koala habitat
• critically endangered communities and plants such as Blue Gum High Forest
• wetlands, mangroves, saltmarshes and littoral rainforest
• land within 100 m of coastline and estuaries
• Lord Howe Island

The anomaly that excluded protection for riparian zones in most of Sydney has been removed.

Land near category 2 classified bushland will now be excluded from the legislation and councils can classify small urban reserves as category 2 even if they contain category 1 vegetation.

The 10/50 metre rules no longer allow measurements from a neighbour’s house unless the neighbour gives written consent.

As can be seen from the amendments, the original legislation ignored some ridiculous situations where vegetation could not possibly be a bushfire hazard.

The code still overrides the bulk of the Threatened Species Conservation Act and local council tree preservation orders.

The fight continues …

The issue of waste and litter from single use plastic bags handed out by supermarkets and other stores has been discussed for many years. For example a detailed research paper was produced by the NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service back in May 2004. This paper recommended that these plastic bags be phased out within five years.

So far the main tactic has been various campaigns to Say NO to Plastic Bags. Several retailers discourage the use of plastic bags by charging for their use. Overall the outcome in NSW in volume of bags used and litter levels has been minimal.

An example of the damage caused by plastic litter occurred in Sydney Harbour recently. Some fishermen returning from a fishing trip noticed a Southern Right Whale in the upper reaches of Middle Harbour. The whale ‘had a big scar on his back and had some fishing line and two plastic bags on his head’. The distressed whale swam alongside their boat allowing the men to remove the life-threatening bags from its head.

In the words of Jeff Angel, Convenor and Director of the Boomerang Alliance of 32 allied groups:

We estimate that at least 16.5 million plastic bags enter the litter stream in NSW every year. Just 8.7 plastic checkout bags contain enough embodied energy to drive a car 1 km. We need to stop this waste and environmental damage.

An Omnipoll survey conducted in July showed that 64% of NSW residents support a total ban on single use plastic bags given out at supermarkets and stores. Where a ban is already in place as in SA and NT the support rises to 81%, demonstrating public acceptance once the measure is established.

The NSW Parliament held a debate on banning single use plastic bags on 13 August in response to a petition signed by 12,472 people. Following the debate the NSW Environment Minister, Mark Speakman, declared the government was committed to accepting the challenge and will discuss options at a further meeting of environment ministers.

Past experience has shown little action at a national level. As with the experience of the container deposit legislation, NSW will have to act on its own and follow SA and NT.

The impact on marine life from plastic may be most obvious in coastal regions, but in August CSIRO released the results of the first analysis of the threat posed by plastic pollution to pelagic bird species worldwide. The report is published by the National Academy of Sciences of the US.

The study examined scientific research since the 1960s into seabird deaths. The analysis of published studies showed that the amount of plastic in seabirds’ stomachs has been climbing over the past half-century. In 1960, plastic was found in the stomachs of less than 5% of seabirds, but by 2010 this had risen to 80%.

The researchers then used a statistical model to predict that by 2050, more than 90% of the world’s seabird species will be accidentally eating plastic, unless action is taken to clean up the oceans.

Why so much more plastic? Global plastic production is increasing exponentially, with a current doubling time of 11 years; thus, between 2015 and 2026, we will make as much plastic as has been made since production began.

What damage does plastic do to seabirds?

The research team had previously found nearly 200 pieces of plastic in a single seabird. These items include a wide range of things most of us would recognise: bags, bottle caps, bits of balloons, cigarette lighters, even toothbrushes and plastic toys. Seabirds can have surprising amounts of plastic in their gut.

Working on islands off Australia, the study found birds with plastics making up 8% of their body weight. Imagine a person weighing 62 kg having almost 5 kg of plastic in their digestive tract. And then think about how large that lump would be, given that many types of plastic are designed to be as lightweight as possible.

The more plastic a seabird encounters, the more it tends to eat, which means that one of the best predictors of the amount of plastic in a seabird’s gut is the concentration of ocean plastic in the region where it lives.

Surprisingly, CSIRO study found that the area with the worst expected impact is at the northern boundary of the Southern Ocean and the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New Zealand. This region is far away from the subtropical gyres, dubbed ‘ocean garbage patches’ that collect the highest densities of plastic. Although this area has low anthropogenic pressures and concentrations of marine debris it also has a diversity ingestion prone seabird species.

Ingestion is known to have many effects, ranging from physical gut blockage to organ damage from leaching toxins. There is a vicious circle. Birds lose condition because the weight of the plastic in their gut creates the impression they have eaten enough. They don’t receive the nutrition needed to travel the long distances necessary to find sufficient food.

A possible example of the impact of plastic ingestion is the experience in spring 2013 of a high level of short-tailed shearwater (mutton birds) deaths (known as a wreck). Large numbers of dead or dying birds were found washed up on beaches from the Gold Coast to Tasmania.

These birds migrate 15,000 km from the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Japan, to Australian shores in late September to nest. Seabird biologist, Dr Jennifer Lavers from Monash University has studied these birds. In a Sydney Morning Herald report she said they had eaten little on their journey and were exhausted by the flight.

She said it was normal for wrecks to occur every 10 years, and this usually indicated a particularly poor year for the birds with storms or no fish available on arrival. However, major wrecks had occurred every second year since 2007, pointing to a wider problem with implications of a future major reduction in the population. She wondered if the ingestion of plastic was another factor.

Dr Lavers has also studied flesh-footed shearwaters (Puffinus carneipes) on Lord Howe Island and found that 90% contain plastic. In 2011, one chick was found to have more than 275 pieces of plastic in its stomach (equivalent to an average human ingesting 10 kg of plastic). Chicks that ingest large amounts of plastic have poor body condition and are likely to suffer reduced juvenile survival. Not surprisingly, flesh-footed shearwater populations on Lord Howe Island and in New Zealand have declined significantly over the past few decades.