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Wednesday 19 June 2024
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Runway works OK to take off
A WINJEEL takes off from Tyabb Airport in February. Designed and manufactured in Australia, the three-seat training aircraft was used by the Royal Australian Air Force from 1955 until 1975. Picture: Gary Sissons
PENINSULA Aero Club has been given the go ahead to resurface the one kilometre long northsouth runway at Tyabb Airport. The work approved by the Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) includes resealing the 10 metre wide “deteriorating” runway and reconstructing and sealing its two weed infested three metre wide crushed rock shoulders. The VCAT decision was made after the aero club sought a review of Mornington Peninsula Shire Council’s failure to grant a permit within a specified time. The council told VCAT it would have granted a permit with conditions. The club asked the council for a permit for the runway works in January 2023 and then amended its application in July, including stating that the correct cost would be $350,000. Council received 50 objections from surrounding residents. VCAT found that some of the language used in the permit application was “not precise” and “not helpful” but disagreed that sealing the runway would “significantly increase” its use. “Mere assertions in submissions are not sufficient,” the finding by VCAT deputy president Teresa Bisucci and senior member Rachel Naylor stated.
Investigations into wind terminal effects Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au REACTION has been mixed to news that studies will resume into the environmental effects on Western Port of a terminal to assemble offshore wind turbines near Hastings. Business lobby group the Committee for Frankston and Mornington Peninsula “welcomes the news” while the Save Westernport group has said the Port of Hastings Corporation will need to prove “that all environmental impacts can be managed”. Plans for the terminal to assemble and ship wind terminals offshore to Gippsland were put on hold in January when federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s rejected the project for having “unacceptable and unmiti-
gable risks to the Ramsar Wetlands of Western Port” (Federal veto a blow to terminal plans, The News 10/1/24). However, the Port of Hastings Corporation has announced that work on the Environment Effects Statement (EES) process for the Victorian Renewable Energy Terminal is “progressing” and that it “will develop the terminal project in consultation with Traditional Owners, local communities and industry”. The port authority said the “comprehensive assessments … [would] recognise the important environmental, heritage and community values of Western Port”. The resumption of the environmental studies has been confirmed by the state Ports Minister Melissa Horne and the Energy and Resources Minister Lily D’Ambrosio.
The Committee for Frankston and Mornington Peninsula issued a news release saying the state budget included $17 million to continue planning and designing the renewable energy terminal at Hastings. It sees the assembly terminal as a “crucial part” of Victoria’s offshore wind industry and in May called for the EES process to continue following the awarding of feasibility licenses by the federal government off Gippsland. Mornington Peninsula Shire Council, which will also decide on the wind terminal application, is a community partner of the committee but does not have a representative on its board. The proposed terminal is earmarked for 25-hectares on what is known as the Old Tyabb Reclamation Area between Esso’s Long Island Point jetty and the BlueScope Steel wharves.
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“The Port of Hastings has many attributes which make it an ideal location for an offshore wind assembly port, including large areas of appropriately zoned land close to deep water channels and proximity to proposed offshore wind farms off the Gippsland and southern ocean region coasts,” the Hastings port corporation said. Save Westernport says while the project is central to the state government achieving its emissions reduction targets (75-80 per cent by 2035 and net-zero by 2050) they must not come at the expense of Western Port’s “critical biodiversity and precious internationally recognised Ramsar wetlands”. “Like many people, we assumed the federal decision would override the state’s plans for Western Port, but in this case it seems the Victorian government is free to take a second bite of
the cherry,” the group’s president Jane Carnegie said. “We have made it clear to the port that as they prepare their EES, we’ll be watching every step of the way ... the bar will be very, very high.” Carnegie said the project would have to be “substantially revised … including the large areas of capital dredging and land reclamation initially proposed in the application”. “And this must be the only project under consideration in the Port of Hastings. Without doubt, Western Port has no capacity for the enormous, environmentally disastrous ‘zombie’ HESC coal to hydrogen project: ... [and] we call on the Victorian government to reject that exploitative carbonintensive project once and for all” (MPs under pressure over hydrogen, The News 13/11/23).
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