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- 02 February 2021 -
The vigil for the St Kilda Mangroves on the South Australian Parliament House Steps held this past Tuesday morning had a great turnout with many sincere and direct messages of concern being shared by the variety of speakers from the St Kilda Mangrove Alliance, members of the SA Parliament and among the people attending.
Thank you for coming along, it was great to see a presence that could not be ignored by the media or the state Government.
- 23 January 2021 -
Braving the heat on Saturday morning (23/01/21) at the St Kilda Boardwalk, representatives of a new alliance announced to the press their united efforts to help Save The St Kilda Mangroves.
They united to ensure a best practice remediation plan is urgently put in place for the recovery and long-term health of this globally significant area.
More groups have since joined the alliance.
- 16 January 2021 -
Last Saturday the 16th of January, scientists from an independent expert organisation called Airborne Research Australia (ARA) captured aerial photography, lidar and hyperspectral imagery of the area at no cost to enable interested parties to properly assess the magnitude and distribution of the problem.
Their flight covered about 1500 hectares of the area in 21 parellel flight lines. The first partially processed data is now coming out and it clearly shows large areas of dead and dying vegetation.
three years ago
The small round part just above the centre of this image is the car park and entrance area for the St Kilda Mangrove Boardwalk.
The orange line heading down and to the right from the car park is the boundary of a gypsum pond adjoining the mangrove area.
The green is healthy growth in the mangrove area.
Last Week
The small round part just above the centre of this image is the car park and entrance area for the St Kilda Mangrove Boardwalk.
The orange and brown sections heading down from the car park are the dead and dying growth.
The green is the remaining healthy growth in the mangrove area.
- 12 January 2021 -
More air time on ABC Breakfast with Spence Denny talking about the impacts on the mangroves at St Kilda.
Sarah Hansen-Young, Greens Senator from 1:29:30 to 1:31:40
Kristen Messenger (long time manager at the Mangrove Trail in the 90s) and Mike Bossley (Dr Dolphin) from 1:42:15 to 1:49:45
Paul DeIonno (Acting Director Mining Regulator) from 2:44:10 to 2:56:26
The Advertiser also ran another story.
- 06 January 2021 -
The morning kicked off on ABC Breakfast with Spence Denny
interviewing Craig Wilkins, Conservation Council of SA; Neil MacDonald,
Fisheries Consultant and EO, Gulf St Vincent Prawn Boat Owners
Association and Peri Coleman, Delta Environmental Consulting.
Susan Close MP then had her own statement to the press.
In the evening channels 9 & 7 had coverage, and then the Advertiser had a story shared nationwide through their network the following day!
- 31 December 2020 -
It has now become clear that any lower brine levels in the leaking ponds are merely the effect of ongoing leakage and evaporation, not removal. It was hard to see the early level drops of millimeters to a centimetre a day, but once the level dropped 10 centimetres it became easy to see.
The brine is now crystallising in all ponds south of St Kilda, making eventual removal (the pumped removal has not yet started) less and less likely. Ongoing leakage from these ponds is now causing visible salt crystallisation in the tidal saltmarshes.
Monitoring of the impacts by the community, government departments and NGO's will continue.
- 24 December 2020 -
The Dept. of Energy & Mining (DEM) issued a "direction" to the mining company on the 24th of December. The direction (which is enforceable under the Mining Act) was to remove brine from the gypsum ponds.
This step forward was considerably weakened by the wording
"...as far as reasonably practical, remove brine from all ponds within Section 2 (adjacent to the impacted St Kilda Mangroves)" - DEM
The brine is becoming stronger daily, and starting to precipitate salt, making it harder to move through pumps and pipes. The longer the mining company can delay, the more likely they will be able to use the "reasonably practical" phrase as a "get out of jail free" card.
- 23 December 2020 -
The Department of Energy & Mining (DEM) held a meeting with several concerned environmental NGOs and scientists to discuss the die-off of mangroves and saltmarshes along 7 kilometers of coast south of St Kilda. Attendees appreciated the opportunity to interact with agency staff, however they left without answers to their questions about immediate corrective actions.
DEM asked attendees to send them written questions but were not able to commit to answering all of them. Disappointing, but not unexpected.
