Vic: Yarra River dredging starts tomorrow

AAP General News (Australia)
04-20-2008
Vic: Yarra River dredging starts tomorrow

MELBOURNE, April 20 AAP - Dredging of Melbourne's Yarra River will begin tomorrow as
part of the $1 billion Port Phillip Bay channel deepening project.

A contentious stage of the controversial project, the dredging of the river, will drag
up two million cubic metres of toxic sediment from the river bed and dump it in a containment
bund in the bay.

The toxic sediment will be loaded into a barge and taken to the clay containment bund,
which will then be capped with clean dredged sand.

The Port of Melbourne Corporation (PoMC) has previously said this is "best practice"

for dealing with the toxic sludge they are dredging.

The $1 billion channel project, started in February and set to finish in October, is
deepening Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay to enable bigger container ships into the port.

In all, 23 million cubic metres of sediment will be moved.

Protesters have lost successive court bids to stop the dredging of the Yarra River
and the bay going ahead.

A crane mounted on a pontoon moored in the seabed tomorrow will start the Yarra River dredging.

The crane, the Goomai, is a specialised high precision grab dredge, PoMC chief executive
Stephen Bradford said in a statement today.

AAP kn/gfr/jt/cdh

KEYWORD: CHANNEL

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