Trinity Inlet dredge plans scrapped - what does this mean for Port Douglas?
Published Monday April 20 2015, 4:00pm
A controversial plan to dredge Cairns’s Trinity Inlet has been scrapped, with environmentalists celebrating but warnings from the cruise ship industry that the region could miss out on valuable tourism income.
The capital dredging plan, which would have seen several thousand tonnes of mud removed from the seafloor and dumped either within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park or a coastal land location, was cancelled last week after the newly-elected Labor government released the project’s unfavourable environmental impact statement (EIS).
The dredging was designed to widen and deepen the Trinity Inlet shipping channel, allowing for larger ships to dock at Cairns Port.
Labor withdrew the $40 million subsidy the LNP government had promised for the project, saying the environmental impacts from the dredging would have been too great.
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The move stifles Ports North’s plan to attract bigger luxury cruise ships to Cairns, with industry members saying it could cause companies and captains to re-think stopping in at a Far North Queensland port.
James Coughlan is the Shore Excursion Manager for Intercruises, which operates cruise ships Rhapsody of the Seas, MS Insignia and Legend of the Seas.
Mr Coughlan said the high cost of offshore moorings and the industry trend toward larger vessels meant the cancellation of capital dredging had big implications for Far North Queensland’s attractiveness as a cruise terminal.
“It’s absolutely going to have an effect,” Mr Coughlan said.
“There are several ships that can come up to Cairns and dock - but what we’ve been seeing is several companies swapping out their vessels for larger and larger ships.
“For example Rhapsody of the Seas will soon be leaving Australian waters and it will be replaced by Explorer of the Seas, which is a much larger vessel.
“When you look at the costs involved with moving passengers on and off a cruise ship moored offshore, it’s enormous - usually a local operator such as Great Adventures or Quicksilver is used for this and their costs can go into the hundreds of thousands per day, so that’s definitely going to be a factor in the decisions that companies make.
“If they’re not going to dredge the inlet, that could mean that that part of Far North Queensland could be seen as having three tender ports as opposed to two tender ports and one docking port at Cairns.
“There’s very few large ships that are going to moor at both Port Douglas and Cairns, but Port Douglas absolutely benefits from cruise ships visiting in Cairns because there are often day trips organised.
“A loss for Cairns is a loss for Port Douglas in this situation, definitely.”
Gerry Ireland, chairman of Port Douglas economic development group Douglas Inc, said the economic benefit from cruise ships was huge.
“Any single visit by one of these vessels can increase Douglas Shire’s tourism expenditure by up to half a million dollars,” he said.
Despite the
Marine conservationist Heidi Taylor from Tangaroa Blue said the project’s cancellation was good news for the region’s waters and reefs.
“The problem with dredging is that the spoil acts like a lot of other marine debris in the way it spreads,” Ms Taylor said.
“Even if it’s dumped on land, it’s not a good outcome - we were actually working with some Indigenous rangers managing an Indigenous Protection Area on Trinity Inlet and they were talking about how the developers were thinking about dumping the spoil there, right on top of them.
“Putting it anywhere is bad, really.”
Dredge spoil from the bottom of Trinity Inlet contains potential acid sulfates, which activate when exposed to air and are toxic to marine life and terrestrial plants.
Ms Taylor said that there needed to be different ways of approaching the issue of dredging.
“We need to be innovative, if we keep doing things the same way we’ll keep getting the same outcomes.
“Unfortunately a lot of environmental issues get overlooked until the impacts are visible.”
What do you think?
Was it a good idea to shut down the capital dredging proposal for environmental reasons, or is the region missing out on a major economic opportunity?
Leave a comment below.
