Australia: activists scale Yallourn power station Cooling Tower in coal protest

19/12/12

19/12/12

Late last week two intre­pid cli­mate change activists scaled one of the cool­ing tow­ers at Yal­lourn coal fired pow­er sta­tion in Vic­to­ri­a’s La Trobe Val­ley. In the end they spent 30 hours on the cool­ing tow­er, the longest pow­er sta­tion occu­pa­tion of it’s kind in Aus­tralia, final­ly com­ing down vol­un­tar­i­ly to be arrest­ed and charged with var­i­ous offences. The protest high­light­ed the enor­mous mul­ti-mil­lion com­pen­sa­tion being giv­en by the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to pow­er oper­a­tors for the impo­si­tion of the car­bon tax. The brown coal fired pow­er sta­tions in Vic­to­ri­a’s La Trobe val­ley are some of the dirt­i­est most car­bon emis­sions pol­lut­ing pow­er sta­tions in Aus­tralia and the world.

Relat­ed: Quit Coal | Latrobe Val­ley Coal pow­er and Cli­mate change | Fur­ther sub­si­dies for Vic­to­ri­an coal by Vic­to­ri­an and Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ments | Elec­tric­i­ty Demand and Emis­sions Falling in East­ern Aus­tralia | 

Yal­lourn Pow­er Sta­tion and it’s asso­ci­at­ed brown coal mine have also been beset with prob­lems this year with the major flood­ing of the mine which has reduced the oper­a­tional capac­i­ty of the pow­er sta­tion. The pol­lut­ed water from the mine, filled with heavy met­als such as mer­cury, lead, arsenic, and cad­mi­um in sus­pen­sion, is being pumped direct­ly into the Latrobe Riv­er which flows direct­ly into the Gipp­s­land Lakes, an impor­tant wet­lands area. The pol­lu­tion impacts fish­ing, tourism and farm­ing in the region, and the health of peo­ple in the area down­stream of the mine.

“Yal­lourn is a dan­ger­ous rel­ic that con­tin­u­al­ly pos­es a threat to local com­mu­ni­ties and vital ecosys­tems in the region, whilst mak­ing a huge con­tri­bu­tion to dan­ger­ous changes in our cli­mate. All of this has not stopped the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from giv­ing Chi­na Light and Pow­er, the own­er of Yal­lourn, $257 mil­lion in hand­outs this finan­cial year dressed up as “com­pen­sa­tion” for the car­bon tax” said Quit Coal spokesper­son and climber Chloe Alden­hoven accord­ing to Quit Coal

The action is the first major protest to chal­lenge the 2009 amend­ed crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture laws. Accord­ing to Quit Coal, the activists were charged with “tres­pass on crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, affix­ing objects to crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture and behav­ing in a reck­less man­ner that could shut­down crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture.”

The laws were amend­ed by the Brum­by Labor Gov­ern­ment in an effort to deter protests con­cerned about cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change and gov­ern­ment inac­tion, from under­tak­ing civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and direct action. Penal­ties include fines up to $45,000 plus impris­on­ment.

State Ener­gy and Resources Min­is­ter Michael O’Brien con­demned the pro­tes­tors in a state­ment, say­ing:

“These extrem­ist groups have threat­ened the gen­er­a­tion of elec­tric­i­ty on a 35 degree day, when the demand for ener­gy is typ­i­cal­ly high, and when all Vic­to­ri­ans need a reli­able sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty,” Mr O’Brien said.

“This sad­ly demon­strates the con­tempt that these groups hold for ordi­nary Vic­to­ri­an house­holds, busi­ness­es and com­mu­ni­ties.

“These protest groups don’t care if house­holds, busi­ness­es, farms, hos­pi­tals, schools, and oth­er essen­tial ser­vices lose their pow­er sup­ply,” Mr O’Brien said.

“This action is also incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous for the pro­tes­tors them­selves, and this event will no doubt divert emer­gency ser­vices from oth­er impor­tant duties.

“These extreme envi­ron­men­tal groups have no respect for main­stream Vic­to­ri­ans and we should not be sur­prised if Vic­to­ri­ans have no respect for the views of these groups in the pub­lic debate on our ener­gy future.”

“These peo­ple are act­ing like dan­ger­ous fools. Their views will be dis­missed accord­ing­ly,” Mr O’Brien said.

But the con­ser­v­a­tive Bail­lieu state Gov­ern­ment has repeat­ed­ly failed the Vic­to­ri­an peo­ple by con­sis­tent­ly act­ing in oppo­si­tion to cli­mate action, sup­port­ing and sub­si­dis­ing the States’s brown coal indus­try, reduc­ing the solar Feed-in tar­iff and sti­fling wind farm devel­op­ment through dra­con­ian plan­ning reg­u­la­tions. Vic­to­ria has been going back­wards on cli­mate and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion since Bail­lieu was elect­ed while many Vic­to­ri­ans want the State Gov­ern­ment to take action on cli­mate change.

The recent­ly released CEDEX report shows that elec­tric­i­ty demand is falling and some of the gen­er­at­ing capac­i­ty of the largest pol­lut­ing coal pow­er sta­tions at Hazel­wood, Yal­lourn and Mor­well can be retired. Much more could be done with a pro-active Gov­ern­ment encour­ag­ing wind farm devel­op­ment and large scalle solar pow­er, as well as a more gen­er­ous solar feed-in tar­iff again.

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