Pollution Incidents, Public Notification

In reply to the Hon. M.C. PARNELL (3 March 2020).

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade and Investment): The Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government has advised:

1. The Department for Planning, Transport and Infrastructure (DPTI) has a range of channels for providing information to the general public and stakeholders, including notice to mariners, DPTI social media channels (Facebook and Twitter), DPTI and ondeck.sa.gov.au websites and media alerts. These are tailored to the situation and deployed as is deemed appropriate. In this case, due to the location and size of the spill, Flinders Ports was responsible for the 'issuing of warnings and incident information to the community and affected stakeholders' under the agreement for Port Adelaide. DPTI assisted in this by issuing media statements as the incident unfolded.

2. Alert SA is capable of including pollution events, DPTI will consider adding marine pollution incidents to Alert SA.

3. DPTI was not informed of any smell or that it was persisting until approximately 15 hours after the spill occurred.

When notified, DPTI and the Environment Protection Authority inspected the area and could not find any source of the smell on the water or banks of the Port River.

As Flinders Ports are the responsible agency for such sized minor spills within the Port River, personnel and members of the MFS attended the spill which was cleaned up quickly.

DPTI were satisfied that the pollution response was handled adequately, and is of the opinion that the smell which was noticed by residents many hours later was not from the minor spill into the Port River, but was from the venting of the shore based tanks which the fuel was being transferred into.

Caltex have recently advised DPTI that the fuel which was being transferred to the shore based tanks from this vessel has a very strong odour.