The fish farm industry and EPA were unprepared to deal with the scale of salmon mortalities last year, RTI documents reported by the ABC show. Yet the Premier would not commit to cleaning up ongoing failures in salmon waste disposal, in response to Greens’ questions in Parliament.
During last year’s mass salmon mortality event, companies were so unable to cope with the sheer amount of fish waste that it ended up being dumped on farms, barely processed, without authorisation and within metres of watercourses. It left farmers having to cop rotting fish waste in their paddocks, and polluted water in their dams.
Things got so out of control, salmon companies ended up digging shallow trenches and burying the dead fish, with a neighbouring farm owner in one instance complaining of a smell so bad it made their home unliveable for weeks. At one point, the EPA lost track altogether of where the fish were being dumped.
Those events paint a shocking picture of an industry completely unprepared and unable to safely deal with with the scale of salmon mortalities they had created, and an environmental regulator incapable of controlling or tracking the waste. Once again, Tasmanian communities and our environment have been the ones to suffer from the salmon industry’s operational failures.
The Greens asked questions of the Government and EPA at the time of the mass mortality event about the failures in appropriate salmon waste management, but neither were honest about the issues raised. The EPA even pretended everything was under control.
After last year’s mass mortality event, the Premier said he’d put the industry on notice. But in response to Greens’ questions in Parliament today, he did not commit to cleaning up polluting salmon waste disposal practices that are still ongoing.
We are still hearing stories from landowners and neighbours about mass spreading of salmon waste on properties across the state, including near waterways, after the thousands of tonnes of mortalities this year.
Clearly, whatever the Premier says has been done to improve waste disposal is ineffective. The Premier needs to make good on his promise to Tasmanian communities and start acting in their interests, instead of big salmon corporations.
