The successful court action that halted production at the pilot wood pellet plant at South East Fibre Exports (SEFE) was labelled a waste of tens of thousands of ratepayer dollars after a Bega Valley Shire Council (BVSC) decision saw the plant restarted.
At an often raucous meeting of the BVSC on Tuesday, the planning application for a pilot wood pellet plant was again approved after the Land and Environment Court ruled the original development approval for the plant invalid in December.
“We’re back where we were when we had to stop in December and the only thing that’s changed is a lot of money has been spent by SEFE, Bega Valley Shire ratepayers and to some extent taxpayers to cover the cost of the court action,” said SEFE general manager Peter Mitchell after the meeting.
It’s believed a bill of more than $80,000 in court costs will have to be met by council at ratepayer cost in what was ultimately a two-month delay in the pellet plant’s operation.
When the application was approved the first time in June last year, the public gallery was filled with anti-forestry activists and supporters for the chip mill, and again there were loud exclamations of dissent when council finally ruled to re-approve the application.
After the meeting Cr Keith Hughes, who was one of the two councillors who opposed the application, admitted that the legal action had cost ratepayers a considerable amount of money, and said he was dismayed by council’s decision that he labelled reckless, short-sighted and defied public opinion.
“Shire ratepayers are already facing a possible huge legal bill for earlier shortcomings in the decision making process and I am disappointed that they were so willing to approve this highly controversial plant today,” he said.
“I presented a petition signed by more than 730 people today but it was ignored by the majority of councillors.”
The application was forced to be reheard after the court upheld SEFR’s argument that there had not been adequate public consultation and questions over ecological sustainability and land zoning.
Greens representative Harriet Swift, who said in a presentation to council that the Albany wood pellet plant’s recent closure showed there was no market for the product, hinted that there might now be further legal action.
When asked that if she believed the SEFE plant would also fall over then why not allow it to do so without intervention, she said, that would “incur a big cost to the environment, the forest and possibly to the ratepayer”.
“There might be legal costs,” she said, but would not be drawn on whether further legal action was being planned.
“It’s too early to say that,” she said, however, she said there were concerns with this latest approval for the application.
“I’m very disappointed and not satisfied with the conditions that council has attached to it,” she said. “They’ve made that approval without seeing any of the noise and emissions data and all that is to be sorted out post consent - but it’s too late.”
In answer to the suggestion that the plant was not economically viable, Mr Mitchell said he did not see any relation between the SEFE operation and the failed Albany plant.
“They were exporting to Belgium and Japan and suffered with the high Australian dollar, plus they were using resources that they had to pick up from the forest rather than using residues (sawdust from timber mills and other waste from the woodchipping process) like we’ve got, they had contamination issues with sand getting into their plant and they used a different, more expensive moulding system than we’ve got,” he said.
“We’ve received a lot of expressions of interest for our product and with our lower costs, there is justification to expand the pilot plant into a larger operation.”
One of the major concerns about the plant for anti-forestry activists was that native forests would be harvested to feed it, however, Mr Mitchell said that was not a financially viable option.
“We get so much more money from woodchips, even when woodchips are at their cheapest, so if we’re going to cut down a tree it would be stupid to just turn it into wood pellets,” he said.
“What makes wood pellets viable is by using existing residues and if there were less of these residues, there’d be less wood pellets. It’s just doesn’t make good economic sense to make pellets out of whole trees.”
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