Download these Desal News as a pdf

Legal Update.

Sadly the federal court action result, announced Friday 16thMay, was not in our favor. At the time of writing, we have not yet decided whether there are adequate grounds to appeal the decision, and we would only contemplate this if we were assured a high chance of success. The aim of the court action was to have the Pilot Plant included as part of the EES process. If we had achieved that result, any work at the site would have been delayed at least 6 months, thus giving us more time to rally Melbourne people to vocally oppose the project and thus force a change in Government policy. Our legal advice was that we had an even chance of success, however as our attempt was unsuccessful, work on the pilot plant will most likely start immediately.

The one positive from the court case was that the judge confirmed that Victoria’s government does NOT have federal government approval to proceed with the pilot plant; thus correcting inaccurate claims from state government. Unfortunately however, it was deemed that state government does not require federal approval. From a “due diligence” angle, it is certainly ludicrous that such work can begin without any environmental assessment or Cultural Heritage Management Plan. Such feelings are shared by at least one of the environmental consultants that we met with at the