Letter to the Editor

55 -77 Kelly St Nelly Bay Magnetic Island

Townsville City Council (TCC) proposes to dredge contaminated marine sediments from the Nelly Bay Harbour and transport, store and treat the sediments on land at 55-77 Kelly Street, Nelly Bay.  In our view, their on-land management of the contaminated dredge spoil is completely inadequate and inappropriate. This land is zoned ‘community facility’’ in the middle of a residential area on our World Heritage Island. After treatment of acid sulphate soils on site and the passage of time, TCC then propose use those marine sediments for sundry as-yet-unidentified projects around the island.

For some time, we have advocated to TCC that the planned project had the potential to have significant impacts on Matters of National Environmental Significance, and therefore should be referred for assessment under our Commonwealth environmental legislation – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

At a public information meeting on 15th March 2025, TCC representatives informed the Magnetic Island community that work would commence on this project in ‘early April’, and that they had commissioned an EPBC ‘self-assessment’ and concluded that an EPBC referral was not warranted.  We have reviewed the self assessment and disagree with this finding.  We remain concerned that, if the project were to proceed, it would indeed risk impacts to Matters of National Environmental Significance, and may therefore result in a breach of the EPBC Act.

As commencement of work is imminent, on behalf of MICDA I have recently lodged a breach report to the compliance team in the Commonwealth Department Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water.

Our main concerns are as follows (see our breach report for further information)

1. TCC has used code rather than impact assessment criteria, and changed allowed uses of a parcel of land (55-77 Kelly Street) in a World Heritage Area without EPBC assessment.

2. The research relied upon in TCC’s self assessment is very limited.  It uses generic national datasets and fails to include a review of published literature relevant to the Magnetic Island context, nor any on-ground research.  This has resulted in an underestimation of the presence of and impacts on protected vulnerable and endangered species in the vicinity of the Kelly Street block.

3. The self assessment ignores the presence of or impacts on marine habitats within Nelly Bay Harbour – including corals and marine plants.

4. The self assessment under-estimates the potential for contamination of surface and groundwater during storage and treatment of contaminated dredge spoil at the Kelly Street site.  It also ignores potential impacts on downstream catchment function and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.  Our recent rain events have amply demonstrated the potential for uncontrolled release of tailwater from the treatment site and erosion and transport of contaminated sediments into our creek systems.  Furthermore, the consideration of contaminants is limited to the acid sulphate soils, and does not address other contaminants including the high salt content of the sediments.

5. The self assessment ignores facilitated impacts from the subsequent (after storage and treatment) planned dispersal of dredge spoil around the island.

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You can download our full breach report here, https://mcusercontent.com/2d6f6c02120ab92fdba07d108/files/2b53196e-93b1-6add-206c-66cbf5ca4edd/Nelly_Bay_Dredge_Dumping_Perceived_breach_of_environmental_law.pdf . 

You might even consider lodging your own breach report, by following the guidance available here https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/epbc/compliance/report-a-breach.

Libby Illidge

President, MICDA