WILLIAMSTOWN residents are rallying against plans for a port they say will obliterate their city view, replacing it with a 1.8-kilometre line of container ships.
The state government has defended relying on a 14-year-old environmental study for the $1.6billion Port of Melbourne expansion.
Under the plans, the government and Port of Melbourne Corporation (PoMC) will start building a new container port at Webb Dock in 2016.
Williamstown residents Denis Weily and Frank Rendell say no proud waterfront city in the world would tolerate such a development and Sydneysiders would “skin you alive”.
State Williamstown MP Wade Noonan said the project’s size meant a new environmental effects statement (EES) should be done to assess the dock’s impact on air quality, public health, noise, vibration, marine ecology, recreational boating, traffic and visual amenity.
“The last time the Liberals were in government, the then-minister for planning determined in 1995 that an environmental effects statement should be prepared on the expansion of Webb Dock,” he said. “Locals want to do more than just select the colours of the five new cranes that will dominate the skyline.”
Mr Rendell, who was on the committee when a 1998 EES was done, said people’s main concern was the “dramatic increase” in the number of containers and ships big enough to
obscure the view of the West Gate Bridge.
“You’re barely able to see the top of the Rialto and the Eureka buildings,” Mr Rendell said.
“The other thing that we’re concerned about is the dramatic increase in the containers that are going to be stored here.
“All over Footscray and Yarraville, wherever there’s a block of land that they can get these containers, they put them on.
“Instead of being the city by the bay, it becomes ‘Container City’.
“If we wanted to put this at Brighton, you would have no hope.
“Of the cities around the world, I can’t think of one that is proud of its seaside frontage that would allow this to be built so close.” Denis Weily, who lives on The Strand, said the view from his home would be of bumper-to-bumper ships.
“Collectively, you have six ships,” he said. “They’re 300metres long … 1.8kilometres of ships.”
PoMC chief executive officer Stephen Bradford said the Webb Dock expansion did not “trigger the referral requirements of the Environmental Effects Act 1978.” In other words, it doesn’t need an EES. Mark Lee, a spokesman for Ports Minister Denis Napthine, said it was reasonable to rely on environmental information that was 14 years old.
He said Planning Minister Matthew Guy had “already independently decided that the original EES for the previously proposed and much larger project” could be applied to Webb Dock.
Mr Lee said the expanded dock would have a larger container park that would help reduce the number of trucks on the road.
