Antinuclear

Legal battle ahead for The Australian govt’s plan to impose nuclear waste dump on sacred Aboriginal land

Plan for Flinders Ranges nuclear waste dump faces legal battle MEREDITH BOOTH, VERITY EDWARDS THE AUSTRALIAN MAY 5, 2016  Environmentalists and trad­itional owners say eight years of legal wrangling, which saw the withdrawal of Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory as a site for a nuclear waste dump, is a precedent for the fight they are prepared to wage against a dump planned in South Australia.Wallerberdina Station, part-owned by former Liberal senator Grant Chapman and adjoining Adnyamathanha sacred sites in the northern Flinders Ranges more than 550km north of Adelaide, has been chosen ahead of five others as the preferred site for a national low-level nuclear waste dump.

The decision was made independently of the state’s ­Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, which hands down its findings tomorrow and is expected to recommend that the state stores high-level radio­active waste from overseas.

Conservation Council of South Australia chief executive Craig Wilkins said he hoped the fight to stop the Wallerberdina dump did not reach court, but he was prepared to support a legal battle. “Muckaty Station was an eight-year campaign. We’re deeply hopeful that we don’t need to do that again,’’ he said yesterday. “Not only is it incredibly sacred country for the Adnyamathanha people, the land is subject to flash flooding and frequent earthquake activity.’’

Elder Regina McKenzie, who lives next to the station, said she was prepared to go to court to prevent a nuclear waste dump being built on burial areas and through a 70km storyline that was particularly sacred to indig­enous women.

“It’s desecration on all fronts, it’s an attack on our ­religion, it’s cultural genocide,” she said. “There are Aboriginal bones that have calcified and turned to stone and what right do they have to move those?”

The Greens have slammed Labor and the Liberals for “teaming up” to defeat a ­motion calling on the government to acknow­ledge traditional owners’ oppos­ition to the dump.

Federal Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg said that a final decision had not been made.

May 6, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, legal, South Australia, wastes