Protesters picket Albany water offices
Protesters stood outside the Albany Water Corporation Building this morning with hand painted signs asking the Water Corporation to “Stop Desal Waste” and “Save our sea life.”
After an unsatisfactory community meeting with the water authority and Albany city councillors ended last night at Elleker Hall to discuss the Water Corporation’s plans to take waste from the Denmark desalination plant and dump it in a pool at Perkins Beach, residents decided to reconvene this morning.
Chairwoman of the Torbay Hill Residents’ and Ratepayers’ Association Jessica Dyer attended the meeting last night and helped organise this morning’s protest.
She said while the meeting last night had “outstanding” attendance, with about 150 people, the Water Corporation said it would go ahead with the plan to dump waste-water from the desalination plant.
“At that point, the crowd was like ‘there’s no point talking to you then’,” Ms Dyer said.
Two representatives from the Water Corporation met protesters in front of their building to try to appease the crowd.
The resounding message from protesters was that they wanted the Water Corporation to have more communication with the community and to present alternative options before moving ahead.
The Water Corporation spokesman said they were working to come up with alternate options to the current plan but they could not make any promises that changes would be made.
He said the organisation will have ongoing monitoring of the site and said that if the environmental impact was “detrimental” then they would stop.
