Slipways  

Essentially the project aims to ensure that slipway operations do not harm the estuarine and coastal marine environments and to develop consistent standards across the state thereby providing direction and certainty for owners, users and regulators.

Whilst the intent of the review is very honourable, the consequences for Tasmania's commercial, council and club owned and private slip operators could be disastrous.

The very real outcome could be significantly less slipways available in the state and big increases in costs for those vessel operators who need to carry out annual vessel surveys and regular repairs and maintenance.

This would apply equally for commercial and recreational vessels including fishing vessels and could result in unviable slip operations with vessel operators left with nowhere to go at a reasonable cost.

Having said that there is a threat to coastal water quality and to the marine environment generally from unregulated slipway activities. The current situation is exacerbated by spiraling public liability premiums for slip operators and other complicating issues such as Crown Land leases, local council responsibility for pollution law enforcement and unenforced State regulatory controls.

This is compounded even more by there being no Tasmanian slipways standard or benchmark, no representative body for slipway owner/operators, no registration of slipways and no third party auditing to ensure that existing State Environment and Pollution laws are being obeyed.

The issues can be basically reduced to two things:

• Despite the lack of environmental law enforcement in the slipway/vessel maintenance industry there are already substantial and adequate State pollution control/environment protection laws in Tasmania and there have been for nearly a decade. The crisis now facing the industry in Tasmania is due in part to a relaxed attitude by the authorities in the enforcement of these laws.
• To ensure the protection of the marine environment how can we gain slipway industry legal compliance in a timely, effective and economically efficient way that does not create further or unnecessary problems, delays or significantly increased costs for operators and for the vessels that use these facilities?

Waste product from boat slipways is internationally recognised as being significantly toxic and hazardous yet historically this waste in Tasmanian has been disposed of by washing it directly into the adjacent water. With many vessel owners doing their own maintenance the responsibility has been upon both them and the slipway operator to comply with state laws.

However little effort has been made to enforce the appropriate laws within the slipway industry in Tasmania. Decades of precedents and non-compliance neither make the activity legally right or acceptable. It does not absolve the State and Local Governments from their responsibility to police and enforce the law and because of their poor performance these bodies must share the responsibility for the current situation.

Many slipway facilities in Tasmania will not be able to comply with proposed pollutant containment measures even if a slipway standard is established. Some slipways become inundated at high tides and many are already economically marginal. Others are situated on muddy substrate that cannot support concrete structures or in-ground waste collection tanks.

The situation will have to be handled carefully and sensitively to ensure that there are no mass closures of the 53 commercial slipways and the total of 210 slipways including private rail type facilities. This would cause a further backlog of fishing and other vessels that cannot put to sea while waiting for survey or maintenance and repairs.

The first step should include an education package to be delivered to all slipway operators indicating clearly what the objectives of the proposed changes are and how they individually are able to bring their slips up to an acceptable standard.

Some State owned slipways have recently been sold to private enterprise and few could possibly comply with existing environmental laws at the time of being sold as an established business. The government sold these slipways knowing this problem so it is likely that funding may be required to ensure that these slipways are upgraded to a suitably acceptable standard.

However there needs to be an adequate source of State funding available to the industry as a whole to assist in allcommercial slipways adapting to and complying with an established standard which may include concrete forecourts and bunding, waste traps, sound barriers and methods of disposing of toxic wastes.

To ensure fair enforcement of existing laws, funding also needs to be made available to local councils for scientific environmental testing of water, site water released to the environment, site soil and sediment as well as ongoing enforcement costs.

Funding must also be made available to assist commercial boat operators absorb any significant increases in slipping costs.

An outcome-based standard needs to be applied where the prescribed outcome is established as a benchmark to attain while how and when that benchmark is attained is established on a case by case basis.

There will be no easy fix for this vital service industry. To expect all of the participants involved to pick up the tab without funding assistance is unrealistic and for this reason we have made strong written and verbal representations to the State Budget Committee of Cabinet seeking support funding in next years State Budget.

To achieve a desired result realistic priorities must be established. The first and most important priority being the protection of the marine environment that the commercial fishing and aquaculture industries rely upon for its very existence.

Bob Lister is the Chief Executive of the Tasmanian Fishing Industry Council which is the peak industry body in Tasmania representing all commercial fishermen, marine farmers and fish processors.

TFIC members currently catch and produce 26,000 tonnes of seafood products each year with a landed value in excess of $306m pa and the industry employs around 7000 Tasmanians in the catch and post-catch sectors.