Worlds Biggest Salt Mine

There is a company that is trying real hard to set up the worlds largest Salt Mine on the eastern side of the Exmouth Gulf over here in Exmouth. <_<

Kells mum flew in from Melbourne in her plane so we took the chance to go up and collect some stills and video off the area today.

We saw tons of sharks, dugongs, turtles, rays and even manta rays, mangroves all over the place and the salt company are saying that the area is no way connected to the Ningaloo Reef.

Just great to see old rusty old heaps of SH&*%&%( ships in the Gulf if it all gets through...all the great ballast water. Lets hope our greedy Western Australian government sees some sense and does not let it go ahead.

Just checking the prop on the 182

Arh yeh lets build a Salt Mine here

i am not sure which is a worse blight on the environment....

a giant salt mine..

or

YOUR SHIRT!

i am not sure which is a worse blight on the environment....

 

a giant salt mine..

 

or

 

YOUR SHIRT!

shirt looks somewhat looks a bit mamboesque to me.... maybe we should start a new topic on loud shirts.

Wags, is there anything you think we can do to get things ramped up re salt mine?

Hey I love that shirt

It's me relaxing shirt.....

Kelly and her group of girls (Cape Conservation) have been onto it, really making it hard for them as they thought they could swan in here and win the town over...Wrong...they hate it when Kelly walks into their mettings as they know they cannot win her over with all their smart collection of words and even one sneaky metting they cut their talk real short when she turned up...Cool hey I think they are actually intimidated by her as she knows her stuff....thats me girl...

They salt company is so sneaky, putting out their EPA report over Xmas etc and so is the shire here. Full of silly old not so smart men set in their silly ways.

I'll post more info soon but it's huge...but I think it could be another big one like the Save Ningaloo.

I remember when I was over there it was a topic of conversation. have to get that young Tim Winton and WWF friends involved again.

Yes Darren, I'm sure they will be apart of it.

I just cannot belive that they say the the Gulf has not conection to the Reef what so ever.

There has been many cases were small boats have been lost in the Gulf and ended up on the beach down the west coast.

Not to mention it only takes one big rain and the ponds get washed into the Gulf?

Then the big old rusty salt ships with their ballast water in the GULF for all the tourists to look at as they wake up and look out their window at the new resort here.

They even said things like,,,,well you know the tourist will like looking at all our lights at night as they look out over the GULF

Blar blar blar it goes on.....crazy....

Wags, you should remind everyone what they need the salt for...

Most salts are used for industry I thought

Here is the HALT THE SALT SITE

Check out how big they want this thing....one Cat 5 cyclone and wamo, it all goes into the GULF then Ningaloo.

Most salts are used for industry I thought

 

Here is the HALT THE SALT SITE

Check out how big they want this thing....one Cat 5 cyclone and wamo, it all goes into the GULF then Ningaloo.

If a cyclone comes through i reckon it's all bets off Nature has a funny way of getting it's own back. Mind you, with all the bitterns they release it could be a bonanza. I heard the prawn catch went up big time when Onslow started discharging theirs.

There's alway some coackroaches of the sea who benefit!

May not be so bad after all? Anything that kick starts the food web sounds good to me.

Yeh Bitterns are great.....

Mexico has the biggest salt works plant in the world - Exportada de Sal S.A. (ESSA). The company makes salt from seawater which is pumped into concentration ponds measuring 33,000 hectars.

The plant is owned by the Mexican Government and Mitsubishi.

The salt plant creates an effluent called bittern (a liquor remaining after salt-boiling). The bitterns are disposed of into the Ojo de Liebre lagoon, a coastal lagoon of the Pacific Ocean.

Every winter the area is used for breeding by the gray whale. The area is also used by many migrating birds from the US and Canada.

In December 1997, 94 green turtles were found dead weeks after the company discharged its bitterns into the lagoon. When the bitterns were investigated to fluoride content, they contained over 100 mg per liter. ESSA had earlier claimed that the bitterns contained the same salts present as seawater, only more concentrated (20-fold).

F- was found to be 60.5 times higher than F- in sea water.

Every year over 24.6 Million cubic meters (m3) of fluoride-polluted bitterns (approx. 6.5 billion US gallons!) are discharged into the lagoon.

Wags,

Perhaps one of tbe best ways to save this area is to do a tv doco on it. Get up in that plane and film. Get underwater and get some beautiful shots. Film mantas from the air, the beautiful shoreline...findd a scienntist to do some research and identifiy endangered species. Edit it nicely, get it onj Tv. Let millions know how important it is!

Can you do it?

Shawn

There must be lots of scinetists who know the area. Get them together and put a petition up to the EPA. Give the TV some film and a petition. they're always looking for a story! There must be something we can do?

If we could spend time filming it all we would but it costs lots of time and money to do things like that. <_<

The government knows it not a good thing to do but it all depends on how greedy they are and if it becomes a political thing or not just like Save Ningaloo was.

We have allready sent lots of our stuff into Halt The Salt and Kelly's kick arse power point presentation is going all over the place to help stop it.

I actually think the company personally hates Kelly as she is making them do their homework. There is not too many people I know that can read a full A4 page of text then remember it all like she can. The stuff she has dug up about them is amazing. Yep...all they care about is making a buck... and they are slick in smoothing the average Joe blow on the street and use sneaky tactics.

What about a 10min hightlight real with one scientist. That would go good for websites, news, etc. I can't imagine production costs would be all that high for that?