Latest Mackay Seaport News

Dredging Project gets the green light

The MPA Board is supporting a 10 million dollar dredging project that will deepen the Mackay port basin by an additional one and half metres to allow the huge 65 000 dwt

PANAMAX bulk carriers to load more sugar, destined for our overseas trading partners. The project will be subject to a comprehensive business study.

The virgin material removed from the sea floor will be deposited in a bunded land fill site on the port's western land, known as Bedford's Paddock. The Bedford's Paddock project has been the subject to extensive community consultation, rigorous scientific studies and detailed review by the port's Community Reference Group (CRG).

The CRG comprises a wide cross-section of community organizations, environmental groups, business leaders, government agencies and port users. In June, Community Reference Group members examined three development proposals for Bedford's Paddock and voted to support an option known as Scenario 2.

This option called for 50 hectares of the 186 hectare paddock to be filled and developed subject to a wide range of offsets and approvals from a number of Government agencies such as the State's conservation watchdog - the Environmental Protection Agency.

The recommendation that flowed from the CRG has now been adopted by the MPA Board. Mackay Port Authority chairman John Taylor said the land would be considered as a possible storage site for shale oil and methanol.

These projects might not come on line for some years until the port access corridor is completed, but it's important the MPA secures this strategic land for future development, he said.

In the long term it will mean more jobs for Mackay families and new capital that will help Mackay's economy – and the Queensland economy -- to continue to grow and prosper.

The traditional owners of the land, the Yuibera People, have put their support behind the project.

A deeper harbour is essential for the operation of our region's robust and continually expanding economy.

To remove the draft restriction on panamax vessels, which current results in sub-optimal loading of vessels and thus higher and less-competitive freight rates, initial indication were that over 1.5 million cubic metres would need to be dredged from the sea floor at the entrance to the harbour and from the area between the sugar and grain loading facilities.

Following extensive port simulation at the Australian Maritime College in Launceston, it became clear that, provided new towage techniques were employed to improve ship navigation across the port entrance currents, the access windows for deep-draft vessels could be extended to take full advantage of the high tide.

As a consequence the assessed dredging requirement has been reduced to only one stage based on a single excavation programme to deepen the harbour by 1.5 metres, involving the removal of approximately 1,000,000 cubic metres of material and taking approximately six months.

A favoured option for the distribution of the material excavated from the harbour floor is as fill over some of the western port lands.

Significant environmental study has been conducted of those lands (refer the downloads section for the Western Lands Draft Report) and conditional support has been indicated by the Community Reference Group to the report's Scenario 2 comprising some 50ha of the 103ha not already under conservation management by the MPA.

Due to recent changes in the international marketing strategy for raw sugar, no time frame has yet been defined for the dredging project. When the project does ultimately proceed, the non-contaminated material removed from the harbour floor, dominantly sandy clay, would be dewatered in an environmentally sustainable manner.

Your Mackay Port Authority's decision on the preferred format for the dredging project and the associated disposition of the excavated material will take account of the expert scientific evaluations and community expectations.