Emailed March 22nd, 2018:
Dear DELWP officer,
Mr. Daniel McMahon (Land & Built Environment | Grampians Region) suggested that I write expressing my concerns over a significant weed infestation on Crown Land. Daniel was supplied a plan showing the infested area by Mr. Lionel Woodford (Earth Resources Regulation). The plan title was “Gorse and brambles on Crown land Mount Egerton.pdf”. Apparently the land parcel in question is P142009. The most immediately obvious problem area is within and directly south of the transfer station at Mt Egerton.
This infestation has taken hold in the last few years to the point that the area has been transformed from reasonably open grassland to currently being a virtually impenetrable area.
My company needs the area cleared of weeds in order to conduct certain ground geophysical work (Deep Ground Penetrating Radar – DGPR). This work requires access sufficient for a person to simply walk relatively straight east-west lines extending from the Main road for about 150m eastward. Line spacings for our purposes need to be about 20m apart. The density of weed growth in the area is such that there is currently only a few thin tracks remaining passable.
Quite apart from our access needs, my company is heavily focused on and committed to environmental improvement. I appreciate that your department will have a limited budget to spread over many areas of responsibility, but it is clear that little if any weed control on Crown Land in the Mt Egerton area has occurred for some years. Please schedule regular attention to this ongoing problem.
Please address this issue as a matter of urgency. Your prompt attention to conducting the works required to clean up the identified area will be much appreciated.
A separate area of concern and the cause of significant disappointment to me, is the unchecked weed infestation on the Crown land area that was the mining licence MIN 4422. My company Tech-Sol Resources Pty Ltd was the licencee of that tenement and during the time we held it we all but eradicated the significant gorse infestation that was present when we first applied for the tenement in about 1987. During the time we were active there we not only attended to weed control but we also safely impounded more than 200,000t of historical tailings that had been discharged into the valley in the 1800’s.
These tailings were significantly contaminated with arsenic and mercury and consequently the surface water quality in the valley when we arrived on the scene was extremely poor. Additionally, the water table was close to the surface for much of the year (the tailings being saturated) and so the area only supported weed growth. No trees were able to grow in the valley on areas covered by the saturated historical tailings.
Tech-Sol removed the tailings from most of the valley and planted the riparian zone with native trees, grasses and shrubs. The success of the revegetation work has been outstanding.
We surrendered the tenement in about 2008 but we continued to conduct annual weed control work and also monitor the rehabilitation success (survival and growth of the revegetation work) for six or seven years after we surrendered the tenement. – Weed control was not our responsibility during this time. It was done anyway in order to prevent any re-infestation that may have negatively impacted on our diligent environmental remediation efforts.
I inspected the area with Mr. Lionel Woodford recently and it was with very great disappointment that I discovered that the gorse problem has been left completely unchecked in recent times. The result of this neglect is that some areas are now once again completely impassable and urgent attention is required to regain some control of the weed problem in this area.
I have attached a plan showing the GDA94 corner coordinates of the surrendered MIN and indicating some of the worst infestation area, but the whole area needs annual attention. (Apologies for omitting air photo coverage but doing so was making the attached document much too big to email). Please action weed control work over the MIN 4422 area as well, with annual follow-up.
I would appreciate it if you would kindly keep me informed and updated about any work that you action and the timing of any such work.
Purely in order to adhere to our company’s transparency and community consultation commitment, this letter will be published on our website and FaceBook page.
Kind regards,
Terry Delahunty.