Clyde dam and Tasmania

Press, 12 October 1982, Page 16

Clyde dam and Tasmania

Sir,—The compulsive and irrational commitment to rapid industrialised growth symbolised by the Clyde Dam Empowering Act parallels a remarkably similar saga in Tasmania. The Tasmanian Hydro-electricity Commission (H.E.C.) has now completed its dams on the Middle Gordon and Pieman Rivers, and this month its bulldozers will begin desecration of the Franklin River in the heart of Australia’s largest wilderness. In Tasmania it is also a crime to let rivers run to the sea unimpeded. The Franklin is rank brown and fit only for leeches, the physically fit and the mentally insane, according to Tasmania’s Liberal Premier. Like N.Z.E., the H.E.C. specialises in single-purpose development and justifies its existence by building more dams. It too produces bald electricity demand figures which equate nicely with proposed dams but whose assumptions are subject neither to public scrutiny nor consent. The latest poll shows that 52 per cent of Tasmanians but only 25 per cent of Australians support the dam. — Yours, etc., FRED OVERMARS. Canowindra, N.S.W. October 5. 1982.