Southern Beaches residents petition for cancellation of salmon farming expansion in Storm Bay

It’s become a bustling region in recent years and now the Southern Beaches community has joined the pushback against the state’s salmon industry.

New community group Protect our WaterWays presents a petition to Tasmanian Parliament with close to 1400 signatures from residents around the Dodges Ferry and Carlton region. Picture: Elise Kaine

Residents of the fast-growing Southern Beaches region have banded together in opposition to the salmon industry’s expansion plans in Storm Bay, forming a new group in an attempt to fend off the proposal.

Protect Our Waterways comprises people living at Dodges Ferry and Carlton and has gathered more than 1300 signatures for a petition to halt increased aquaculture production.

Lyons Greens MP Tabatha Badger tabled the petition in parliament on Tuesday.

Protect Our Waterways present MP Tabatha Badger with a petition signed by around 1400 Dodges Ferry and Carlton residents. With Doges Ferry resident Greg Lawson

Protect Our Waterways spokesman Greg Lawson, a Dodges Ferry resident, said the group was “extremely concerned” about “the damage [done] to our previously pristine waterways”.

“These bays are not a place for toxic, billion-dollar foreign corporations to come and use them and abuse them like a septic tank, not pay their share … get free fresh water – which is in short supply – and dump their waste in the bottom of our bays,” he said.

“There’s no social licence left for this industry here. There’s no commission from the public and from the community for our bays to be abused like this.”

Dodges Ferry resident Greg Lawson speaks against salmon farming at Parliament Lawns. Picture: Elise Kaine

Chunks of dead salmon have been washing up on beaches in Southern Tasmania amidst a mass mortality event and members of the community have been warned not to touch them or swim near the “fatty substances”.

Ms Badger said communities were fed up with “the impact that toxic salmon has had”.

“What we’ve seen [recently] is a clear example of why we have to have a fully independent Environment Protection Authority (EPA) that has teeth so that all industries in Tasmania that are polluting the environment … are actually held to account so that this is not continually repeated,” she said.

A salmon pen in Storm Bay. Picture: Supplied

“What we’ve seen in the past week … is completely unacceptable, and we absolutely cannot stand by and see a repeat of this happen again.”

Salmon Tasmania CEO Luke Martin has said that there are no new fish farms proposed for Frederick Henry Bay or near the Southern Beaches communities.

Transport, Business and Industry Minister Eric Abetz said the EPA was responding to the mortality event and accused the Greens of being “ghoulish” and “dancing around the misfortune that has occurred in Storm Bay and elsewhere within the salmon industry”.

Minister for Transport, Business and Industry Eric Abetz.

“Once we have all the facts on the table, we will then consider what needs to be done, if anything. In the meantime, my heart goes out to all the workers who are working – and some of them volunteering – and helping with the clean-up, working overtime,” he said.

“Let the authorities do their work, and then we can determine what the proper and reasonable outcome ought to be. That said, I don’t think anybody predicted the scale of that which has occurred.”

Originally published as Southern Beaches residents petition for cancellation of salmon farming expansion in Storm Bay