“It (the bottom layer) will at times undoubtedly contain Legionella and these could multiply there given the right conditions,” he said.

“This layer would also act as a source to contaminate newly arrived woodchips, setting the stage for a new cycle of Legionella growth.

“Dispersal of dust … containing these organisms could pose a significant health risk to susceptible persons working in, or residing in, adjacent residential or business districts, as well as to susceptible workers on the Gunns site and in the port area.”

Dr Steele was commissioned to provide the advice by Royal Hobart Hospital physician Frank Nicklason.  Last week, Dr Nicklason apologised to timber company Gunns for his 2004 statement that the woodchip pile “almost certainly” had Legionella present that could blow across Burnie.  However, he said his concerns about the potential for public health risks from the pile — initially sparked by several Legionella cases in Burnie — remained.

Dr Nicklason said he accepted that Gunns’ sampling in 2002 had not found Legionella in the pile.  However, he said Dr Steele’s findings, from July this year, contributed to his concern and warranted further investigation.

Gunns’ own advice, conducted independently in 2002 and released under Freedom of Information, found that the available evidence “suggests strongly” that the bottom layer is “not a reservoir for Legionella”.

However, Dr Steele, formerly director of clinical microbiology at the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science in Adelaide, disagreed.

“To claim that the sacrificial layer did not contain Legionella on the basis of two tests of small samples is misleading,” he says.

He agreed the bottom layer, because it was relatively undisturbed, was unlikely to pose much risk to the community, but that this did not mean there was no risk, since Legionella there could contaminate new woodchips.

When asked whether Gunns stood by its own findings, a spokesman said: “We don’t have to: Dr Nicklason has stood by it.

“At the time Dr Nicklason gave this apology he was in possession of the Steele report. His attempt to retract his apology by reference to this report is hypocritical, disingenuous and beggars belief.”

Dr Nicklason said his “carefully worded” apology — made as part of settlement of defamation proceedings — merely acknowledged that Legionella had not been found in samples taken by Gunns, and that its report had concluded there was “no available data” to implicate woodchips as a microbial health risk.

There are few detailed studies of Legionella in woodchip piles, although Dr Steele has found the bacteria present in all forms of composting and degrading wood products, including woodchips.

On the basis of his work, Dr Steele believes that conditions in woodchip stockpiles are ideal for Legionella and other micro-organisms that require moisture and warmth.

Legionella is thought to spread by people inhaling the bacteria contained in tiny water droplets, known as aerosols, or in dust.

Over the years, there have been complaints about dust and debris blowing from the stockpile to the Burnie CBD, adjacent to the port.

These have been focused on days of easterly winds, which occur about 20per cent of the time, and when woodchips were being loaded on to ships.

The 2002 Gunns report, conducted by Adelaide environmental health expert Richard Bentham, pointed out that survival of Legionella in aerosols was “highly dependent upon ambient weather conditions”.

For this reason, Dr Bentham concluded the health risks from the Burnie pile were “most probably confined to employees or contractors working on the site” and that transmission beyond the port area was “unlikely”.

However, Dr Steele says Legionella “could survive well in dust travelling long distances, even in adverse climatic conditions”. He cites instances of up to 20km.

.

[Source:  ^http://www.leatherwoodonline.com/wild/2006/recherche_bay/index.htm]

However, the deal is not without its critics. Terry Edwards, CEO of the Forestry Industries Association, is distressed that the forest will continue to grow, rather than be turned into cash for Gunns. Newly appointed federal forests minister and Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz has also criticised the agreement, describing it as “a grubby deal”. According to Abetz, the area “has no heritage value”.

‘The HVEC and Code Green have taken direct action on Tassie’s forest floor this morning to highlight ongoing logging in high conservation value forests that were supposed to be protected under the Inter-governmental Agreement. Campaigners are currently taking simultaneous action in two logging coupes in the north and south of the island – RS117C on Roses Tier, north of Ben Lomond, and in the Catamaran area, where forests are being logged behind Recherche Bay.

“This is an area that should have been given immediate protection on March 15 this year. Instead we are still seeing machines clearing what has been identified by both the State and Federal Governments as being of high conservation value.” Said Jared Irwin, spokesperson for Code Green.

“The lost values of these forests that are bordering the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is such a tragedy, when the logging commenced after the State and Federal Governments announced they would be protected in August 2011,” Said Jenny Weber, Huon Valley Environment Centre’s spokesperson.’

.

.

.

^http://epress.anu.edu.au/aborig_history/axe/html/ch13.html

.

‘A thriving sawmilling industry existed at two centres around the bay by 1900. The steam-driven mill continued at Waterhole Cove until 1868. Then the industry faltered until 1884, when large sawmills were established by the Catamaran River and at Leprena on the western side of the northern bay. By 1900 the population living there exceeded 100 at each centre. It was around the turn of the century that coal mining also offered employment, and an active industrial period followed for a few years. The seams of coal proved limited or uneconomic. As trees were felled, their distance from the sawmill increased. This required timber rail tramways establishing a network radiating out from an area and moved on when that area was harvested. The same applied to transporting coal.

By 1939 a complex network radiated from harbour-based centres at Catamaran, Leprena and Cockle Creek. Traces of these lines survive today in regrowth forests.[1] One moss-covered segment runs by the shore on the north-eastern peninsula in the area of the French activities in 1792.

The timber industry is necessarily situated in forests, so bushfires prove a recurring hazard. The Catamaran mill was destroyed in a 1914 bushfire, coinciding with the abandonment of the coal mine there. The spasmodic and transitory nature of frontier employment was again demonstrated at Recherche Bay when the community of around 100 people, supporting a school and a store, faced sudden unemployment. Today the media feature factory closures and speculate about the future employment of the urban employees. The history of much of rural Australia also has been a boom and bust story of employment, as rural industries prosper then fold. Recherche Bay is a classic example. On a smaller scale than urban plant closures, the impact upon the families dependant upon a timber mill or colliery was no less drastic.’

[Chapter 13. Good and Bad Times]