**Posted for your information and discussion amongst yourselves**

Expansion \'will crush wetlands\'

Rachel Kleinman
The Age
October 11, 2006

PLANS to expand Western Port's commercial shipping activities could crush its wetlands ecosystem, home to thousands of birds and invertebrates, environment groups say.

The Port of Hastings Corporation this week recommended a "high-growth scenario" in its draft strategy for future land use and transport.

But the Western Port and Peninsula Protection Council said the environmentally sensitive bay should never have been used for commercial activity in the 1960s, and expansion posed a further threat.

Council research co-ordinator Brian Cuming said the bay waters operated like a giant washing machine around French Island, circulating pollutants and bringing them into contact with the sensitive ecosystem, rather than washing them out.

"The inevitable polluting effects of port development and port operation, such as oil spills, introduced marine pests … and dredging … would affect the whole bay," Dr Cuming said.

Western Port is listed under the international Ramsar Convention, which aims to conserve more than 1600 wetlands globally.

It includes sites of international geological importance and nationally important salt marsh, according to its Ramsar classification, and is internationally significant as a roosting area for birds such as summering waders. Its mudflats host more than 1300 species of invertebrate fauna.

A high-growth development at the Port of Hastings, between Stony Point and Long Island, would cater for 3.7 million trade containers and 640,000 motor vehicles through the port by 2035, including more than 3400 truck movements a day.

Long Island would be developed for international container handling facilities. The Western Port Highway would be upgraded and new rail links created from Hastings to Dandenong and Gippsland.

Transport Minister Peter Batchelor's spokeswoman said the Port of Hastings needed to accommodate rapid trade growth beyond 2030. The three-stage development would be carried out in "a sustainable and environmentally suitable way over the next 25 years", she said.

"Any future development will need to recognise that the Port of Hastings is located within a designated Ramsar site and will be subject to relevant Federal and State planning approvals and consents."

But Blue Wedges Coalition spokeswoman Jenny Warfe said Western Port was 40 per cent mudflats at low tide.

"We know from academic research that swamps, salt marshes and mangroves provide us with the powerhouse of our environment," Ms Warfe said.

"We shouldn't be building storage facilities on them."

Western Port's channel is 14.3 metres deep at low tide but dredging might still be needed.

Corporation chief executive Ralph Kenyon said environmental concerns would be considered. "Our task is to plan for development and we are conscious of doing that in a sustainable way," he said.

The strategy is available for public comment until November 3.