http://www.theaustralian.com.au/index.asp?URL=/state/4361630.htm Govt planning for radioactive dump: Greens 30jan99 THE West Australian government was secretly preparing to establish a radioactive and toxic waste dump in the state's remote north-west, Greens MP Giz Watson said yesterday. An $80 million upgrade underway on the road from Port Hedland, 1,660 km north of Perth, to Marble Bar, and an extension leading a further 132 km east, was paving the way for the dump, she said. Ms Watson said the road extension to Newcrest's Telfer gold mine, which was winding down operations, and the recently rejuvenated Straits Resources Nifty copper mine, was in fact being built to enable US company Pangea to set up a radioactive and toxic waste dump. "Even the most gullible of us doesn't believe any government, let alone a Liberal economic rationalist government, would spend that much money on the small mining companies which are en route," the WA upper house MP said in a statement. "The road is the closest distance between a large industrial port and the geological formation currently proposed by Pangea which they have identified as the world's most desirable location for depositing highly radioactive, toxic waste material." Ms Watson said the government would not spend $80 million on an outback road unless they had a major project in mind. "The WA government is using double talk to get out of admitting the foundations are being laid for us to become the waste dump for other countries' deadly chemicals which the rest of the world are rightly terrified of," she said. "The outback of Australia is one of the last vast unpolluted parts of the world, and I bloody well want to keep it that way." Transport Minister Murray Criddle's spokesman Doug Cunningham denied any knowledge of Pangea's proposal, saying the road was being built to service the two mines and local Aboriginal communities. "It's a totally fatuous proposition to link the upgrade of the Woody Woody Road to a proposed toxic dump," Mr Cunningham said. "The completed road will increase services, especially during the wet season, to the Telfer and Nifty mines, and also provide access to the communities around Marble Bar and the many Aboriginal communities in the area." Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html The Year 2000 Bug - An Urgent Sustainability Issue http://www.peg.apc.org/~psutton/grin-y2k.htm
