Antinuclear

Kimba and Hawker are only 200km apart, falling on either side of Port Augusta at the top of the Eyre peninsula. They are both in the federal electorate of Grey. The former federal member, Barry Wakelin, has drawn criticism from his ex-Liberal party colleagues for publicly criticising the proposal, citing as his chief concern the impact of community division.

“Once you divide the community, where there are really clear views one way or the other, it’s quite difficult to settle that down again,” he says.

What is proposed?

The proposed Wallerberdina site is on rangelands (used for grazing), occupying a 100 hectare slice of the 23,580ha station owned by former Liberal senator Grant Chapman, who sat on nuclear waste committees in his 28 years in parliament.

Both of the proposed sites at Kimba are on farming country, prompting a grassroots campaign against the use of agricultural land to dump nuclear waste.

All three sites were volunteered by the property owners, as part of a process that saw 28 sites nominated across Australia. The government says it is a coincidence that the three finalists are in one narrow patch of SA.

The proposed facility would provide for the disposal of low-level nuclear waste and the temporary storage — for how long it’s not clear — of intermediate-level nuclear waste.

“The facility will be able to hold Australia’s current and future intermediate-level waste until [the] establishment of a permanent facility for this material,” the taskforce says in a statement to Guardian Australia. “The permanent facility will be in a different location and of a different type.”

It says there’s about 1,771 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste and 4,975 cubic metres of low-level waste at 100 sites across Australia, including the Lucas Heights reactor, and those volumes are expected to rise incrementally over time.

There are 45 jobs promised as part of the facility and the host community will also receive $31m in federal funding, including $20m for community projects and $3m designated for Indigenous groups.

Both the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation, covering Kimba, and the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association (Atla), covering Hawker and Wallerberdina, oppose the facility.

Regina McKenzie, an Adnyamathanha traditional owner who lives on a station adjoining Wallerberdina, says federal contractors damaged a cultural women’s site while conducting their cultural heritage survey. Atla was working with the station owner to catalogue the archeological and intangible heritage before the site was volunteered for a nuclear facility, but say they have since been left out.

“The government has been talking at us, they have not been talking with us,” she says.

The Barngarla lost a federal court challenge arguing that all registered native title holders should be eligible to vote in the community ballot, whether they are local residents or not, and are appealing that decision to the full court. An attempted injunction to stop the community ballot going ahead until that appeal was heard was unsuccessful. ………

Wakelin says the decision ought to have been made without money on the table. Affected communities have already received $5.76m in funding for community projects and a further $4m was announced this month.

He says politicians are “petrified” of discussing nuclear waste, and he believes the federal government will try to get the issue resolved quickly – even if both communities vote no.

“As the minister tells us now: ‘Yeah, you can vote, but I’ll still make the decision’,” he says.

Greg Bannon, a spokesman for the Flinders Local Action Group, has been opposed to the project since Wallerberdina was named as one of six shortlisted sites in November 2015 (the site was named Barndioota at the time). He knows the area well from working as a jackeroo. It’s typically very dry but has been known to flood, and abuts the Flinders Ranges, the most seismically active area of SA.

“I thought: this cannot be the right place, it must be a mistake,” Bannon said…….https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/27/the-most-divisive-thing-two-small-towns-brace-for-a-vote-on-nuclear-waste