Bushfire at Secret Rocks burns through thousands of hectares in 7 days, 70 km away from last site left on shortlist for radioactive waste dump
Pinkawillinie Conservation Park, South Australia. The park is situated within 1km of the Federal Government’s proposed radioactive waste dump site. (Source: National Parks and Wildlife Service South Australia)
A fortnight ago it was announced that the Flinders Ranges are no longer an option for Australia’s nuclear waste dump, leaving just one place on the Government's shortlist: Kimba, South Australia, a tiny town west of Whyalla, in middle of the state's wheat belt, a stop to be made along the road that leads across the Nullabor Desert, halfway between Sydney and Perth.
Recently, Kimba has been lavished with millions, in a move from the Morrison Government that appears to represent a delayed quid pro quo: in return, the community will potentially live while radioactive waste, with its risks and lifespan of thousands of years, sits nearby. Australia will not provide financial support to the volunteer firefighters currently fighting in the climate emergency in South Australia and New South Wales without pay, said Morrison, but just months ago the Federal Government had $6 million to give to South Australian towns they would love to see willingly submit to becoming a nuclear waste dump.
Since listing Kimba as a prospective dump, the Government has failed to specify exactly what type of waste will be housed at the proposed facility. Never mind: the local Catholic Church has funds for an upgrade, and the tennis courts are to be resurfaced. The photographic society is getting a wall mounted TV, the pony club, new storage trailers, and the Kimba Bowling Club will be gifted a retractable shade system. All of these grants are listed by the Government under the category name of "Radioactive Waste Management".
$30,000 has recently been channelled into mental health workshops by the Government, which might seem helpful, given the dire lack of accessible mental health services in regional Australia—until you read that the nuclear dump site selection process has caused years of psychological stress and division among Kimba residents, which the Federal Government has been aware of since 2017, according to documents released under freedom of information law.
An $80,000 grant has been dedicated to the development of a new ecotourism attraction at Secret Rocks, listed by the Government as "Secret Rocks: Kimba's Premier Ecotourism Destination", which would come complete with a "self-guided interpretative walk" and "reintroduction of native animals such as mallee fowl, and potential reintroduction of locally-extinct bandicoots." The mallee fowl was identified as living in the site on which the nuclear waste dump would be built.
Scrub at Secret Rocks, "Kimba's Premier Ecotourism Destination", has been on fire for 7 days now, as of this writing, after a grass fire started on December 20, 2019, the fourth day of an extreme heatwave in South Australia.
The Secret Rocks fire was just one of the many that started across the state that day: 1,600 hectares were lost near Maitland on the Yorke Peninsula, almost 7,000 hectares and much of a conservation park were lost in the Coorong region to the state’s south-east, grass fires sprung up along roads in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, almost 19,000 hectares were burnt on Kangaroo Island, there were multiple fires near the border to the west, along with the devastating Cudlee Creek fire in the Adelaide Hills in which at least 25,000 hectares and 82 homes have been burnt to the ground, and one man lost his life defending his home.
The fire at Secret Rocks is burning approximately 40 kilometres east of Kimba, 67km away from the Pinkawillinie Conservation Park, next door to where the radioactive waste facility would be constructed. The South Australian Country Fire Service data initially reported it as having burned through 4,278 hectares, but this figure was revised on Boxing Day, down to 3,571 hectares.
Fire conditions are set to worsen again in South Australia this weekend, after only a few days of respite for emergency responders, with predictions of temperatures hovering close to 40 degrees and dry lightning state-wide.
Published in mid-2018, the Federal Government's assessment of the potential dump site near Kimba stated the risk of bushfire hazard there "is relatively low and should not preclude the development occurring."
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AECOM Client: Commonwealth Department of Innovation, Industry and Science
The company behind the Federal Government's assessment report of the dump site near Kimba is the Adelaide branch of US-based engineering firm AECOM, who have chosen to associate with other clients profiting from their damage of Australia's environment, undertaking work for Adani's Carmichael Coal Mine, the Whitehaven Coal Mine in New South Wales, Queensland's Callide Mine, the Telfer Deeps Mine, and projects for BHP Billiton. AECOM are also behind the Melbourne West Gate Bridge project, which was again delayed recently after the discovery of contaminated soil on the project site.
In the United States, AECOM has long contributed to the creation of nuclear weapons, after acquiring the URS corporation in 2014, who held a contract with the US National Nuclear Security Administration overseeing development of the US nuclear weapon arsenal at the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories. The AECOM contract at Los Alamos was ended by the NNSA earlier this year after a series of high-profile nuclear safety lapses and near-disasters at the site.
"At AECOM, we're driven by a common purpose to deliver a better world," reads a slogan on AECOM's website.
Under earlier governments, South Australia had fought off plans for a nuclear waste dump, with the Howard Federal Government abandoning plans for a site at Woomera, in the state's far north, in 2004 after extensive opposition, and former Premier Mike Rann introducing laws to prevent a national nuclear waste dump being placed in the state in 2010.
South Australia's former Premier, Jay Weatherill, turned things upside down in 2015 by stating his Government would be "open" to hosting a nuclear waste dump, despite the preventative laws introduced by Rann. Weatherill's backflip on state policy came the year before his wife, Melissa Bailey, started working at AECOM, according to her LinkedIn profile.
In mid-2018, the Federal Government published AECOM's report on the proposed Kimba dump site through the Department of Innovation, Industry and Science.
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DESKTOP ASSESSMENTS OF BUSHFIRE RISK, COURTESY OF GOOGLE EARTH
A promotional photograph from bushfire management consultancy Terramatrix Pty Ltd. (Source: Terramatrix Pty Ltd via Facebook)
That report, prepared by AECOM, includes a bushfire risk assessment of the site that appears to be cater to the Government being able to meet the compliance thresholds within the Building Code of Australia, necessary in order for construction of the radioactive waste dump to proceed.
Sections of the bushfire assessment include selective and outdated data from 2006 and 2007, gloss over the effects of climate change, and make little mention of the possibility of worst-case and emergency scenarios, like the unprecedented 5 million hectares burned in Australia in bushfires this year.
To address the increased threat of fires due to climate change, the report referenced just one study—an 11 year old study at the time of publishing, from 2007. The study included projections of increased bushfire risk weather due to climate change for 2020 and 2050, relative to data from 1990. AECOM's report was published by the Federal Government in mid-2018, just18 months before the first round of the study’s projected climate change impacts were to potentially become a reality.
No reference to current climate science was included, though a paragraph to state the obvious was: "The weather analysis [in AECOM's report] is based on historical data that may correlate poorly with future fire weather due to the impact of climate change, which is predicted to generate hotter and drier conditions across southeast Australia."
The initial work of compiling the bushfire risk report was outsourced by AECOM to Terramatrix Pty Ltd, a Victorian firm based in Melbourne that promote themselves as an "expert bushfire management consultancy that provides high quality, reliable and affordable bushfire services".
Terramatrix, the report openly acknowledges, did not visit the proposed nuclear waste dump site in Kimba even once as part of their bushfire risk assessment.
Source: National Radioactive Waste Management Facility: Site Characterisation- Technical Report Napandee, 2018, pg 50. (Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science)
Instead, Terramatrix relied on field data provided to them by AECOM to conduct their assessment, along with "Google Earth imagery".
Terramatrix and AECOM included data from South Australia's Country Fire Service in their assessment, but inexplicably, opted to only use data from 2009 until 2015, despite referencing a more current fire ban season from the time of the report’s publishing that stretched until April 2018.
The Country Fire Service data showed a list of incidents within 20-30km of the potential dump site, from 4 of the closest Country Fire Service brigades. Despite 43 incidents of grass or stubble fire, 15 incidents of scrub and grass fire, 3 incidents of grain or crop fire and 1 tree fire recorded in the area 6 years, AECOM wrote that the risk of "bushfire hazard [at the site] is relatively low".
AECOM argued it would be the same anywhere in the country: "It is considered that the need for, and type of, bushfire protection measures is largely independent of the site selection process ie. the same mitigation measures would be required, and should be able to be provided, at any of the sites. One possible exception may be the provision of an adequate water supply for fighting if water supply is a constraint."
No mention was made of the drought that has affected Kimba for several years.
Later in the bushfire risk assessment, AECOM referenced a 2015 academic study that states "human-caused ignitions are the main source of wildfires in south-eastern Australia and population density has been has been found to be the most important variable related to the location of ignitions". AECOM did not explain whether human-caused ignitions were related to the number of Country Fire Service incidents that had occurred in the potential waste facility area.
According to AECOM, there was a "low" population density around the proposed nuclear waste dump sites—but the corporation apparently did not source accurate population data from the Government of South Australia, and instead referenced what was 12 year old data at the time of publishing, from 2006.
Source: National Radioactive Waste Management Facility: Site Characterisation- Technical Report Napandee, 2018, pg 65. (Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science)
In order to meet the bushfire risk requirements of the Building Code, AECOM continued, some of the vegetation used in the risk assessment report could potentially be excluded from future assessments. Depending on where the radioactive waste dump "was to be located within the site, most of the other vegetation patches shown in Map 1 may be excludable," the company wrote.
The bushfire risk assessment was based on a safety buffer of 200 metres around the proposed dump site. The risk of a fire reaching the site from the nearby Pinkawillinie Conservation Park, according to AECOM, was minimal, as "a fire in the Conservation Park would have to travel more than 1km...before impacting [the site] as a grassfire."
Media reports have suggested the site for the nuclear waste facility will be increased by the Federal Government from 100 acres to 170 acres, for reasons that have not been explained to the public, which would alter, and possibly render invalid in parts, the details contained in site assessment report compiled by AECOM.
No mention of new work being completed to assess a larger site has been made by the Federal Government.
Neither AECOM nor Terramatrix Pty Ltd have responded to a request for comment.