Glamorgan Spring Bay Council faces fish farm anger from residents

LOCALS packed the Glamorgan Spring Bay Council chambers to hear deliberations on amendments for salmon farming at Okehampton Bay.

Kevin Pregnell was one of many people who crammed into the Glamorgan Spring Bay council meeting. Pictures: SAM ROSEWARNE

THE Glamorgan Spring Bay Council has agreed to forward almost 4000 representations about proposed salmon farming at Okehampton Bay to the Tasmanian Planning Commission for final consideration.

The council will advise the commission concerns raised in the representations do not warrant changes to the draft amendments.

Residents packed the small Triabunna council chambers during Tuesday night’s meeting, with some forced to watch proceedings on a screen in the kitchen because of overcrowding. Signs reading “No fish farms” were displayed throughout the council’s deliberations.

Deputy Mayor Cheryl Arnol said she had “grave concerns” about the vast number of identical representations submitted through Environment Tasmania. Of the 3863 submissions, 3795 were identical.

“That site has been home to aquaculture activities for 40 years,” Cr Arnol said.

“The last time it was pristine was when Aboriginal people fished there in canoes.”

Anti-fish farm protesters outside the council chambers after the meeting.

Cr Debbie Wisby said she had legal advice that contradicted council’s statement the representations did not warrant amendments to the applications.

Cr Jenifer Crawford foreshadowed a motion to withdraw the amendments until the State Government’s Marine Farming Review Panel made its findings on Tassal’s proposed Okehampton Bay operation and that “council resolves to tell the Tasmanian Planning Commission that it considers the representations warrant significant amendments”.

The recommendations passed with only councillors Crawford and Wisby voting against both motions.

Tassal plans to install 28 new pens holding 800,000 fish in Okehampton Bay within two years.

Orford resident and president of RecFish Tasmania Don Paton said the board of his organisation was “100 per cent” against the fish farm proposal.

“We’ve got one of the last, most beautiful, untouched parts of Tasmania left on the East Coast and to let [Tassal] up here would be an absolute disaster,” he said.

“We’ve got real, serious concerns.”

It was standing room only in the council chambers.

Resident Bernie Wangeman said his home was one of the closest to the proposed Okehampton Bay development.

“It does affect our amenities. There’ll be noise, there’ll be lights, there’ll be traffic, I could probably live with that, but I can’t live with what they’re doing to the ocean,” he said.

Another resident asked whether council had checked if a “bot” had been used to lodge the Environment Tasmania submissions and whether the “No fish farm” signs scattered throughout the municipality could be removed.

Environment Tasmania strategy director Laura Kelly said there were questions about how council could assess a proposal that had not been through the State Government process yet.

She said an environmental report on dredging had not been published when it was supposed to be, but documents showed dredging the area would be “risky” because of occurrences of toxic algal blooms.

Originally published as Glamorgan Spring Bay Council faces fish farm anger from residents