"We were meeting with Forestry about three times a week. Sometimes down here and sometimes up on the coupe. One time we had a meeting scheduled for the Thursday at eleven o'clock and at ten o'clock they were going to start spraying up on the coupe. So we said, 'Don't bother coming to Lorrina, we are all going to be up on the coupe,' and we were. That was OK. They stopped spraying, they sent their guys away for a few days or a few weeks. Negotiations kept going. They gave us concessions. They did a ground-based operation rather than aerial, to minimise the contamination risk; they gave us extra buffers - they were supposed to be 70 metres from the stream and they increased it to 100 metres. They were going to spray amatrol and atrazine but they dropped amatrol and decided they'd use round-up instead. They said that had to have a persistent pre-emergent herbicide, which was atrazine, but they had to spray it in conjunction with a knock down herbicide. Paul Smith, the Area Forester, said to me, 'You've run a good media campaign, you've had good coverage, but that's enough' That was the red rag to the bull!
On the day Forestry Tasmanian sprayed"..Finally it was spray-day. We trucked up and stood in front of the tractors and prevented them starting work. Alan Watson, the District Forester, called in the big guns and they came and started arresting people...
"..Forestry said publicly that if they were going to permit us to negotiate over our water catchment they would be in a position where everybody would want to negotiate over their catchment...
"..after the second day of arrests they [Forestry Tasmania] banned the media from the site ..
"Forestry promised us some tests. They have a statutory obligation to test pre-spray, day of spray and then after the first significant rainfall. They tested pre-spray, they tested day of spray, and then it didn't rain. A month after spraying we had really light drizzle. Alan Watson rang me up and said there was a bit of rain up there over the weekend so he asked, the Department of the Environment - the DELM - to come up and take some samples. I said, 'It really didn't rain much Alan; it's just a bit of drizzle.' On the Thursday it absolutely pissed down and I rang him and said, 'Alan it's raining; this is real rain,' and he said, 'Annie I can't have them running up and down the State twice in one week. I just can't do that.'
DELM (The then Tasmanian Department of Environment and Land Management)"..We rang the emergency number at the DELM and we said, 'We need this testing to take place, it's pissing with rain and the Forestry Commission won't do it.' So they sent somebody out. ..We went out with our bottles from the Launceston Environment Centre and took some samples. DELM came out 45 minutes after us and took samples in exactly the same spot. We were there to meet them and they didn't know we had taken samples. We sent ours to Melbourne. They sent theirs back to Hobart and had them analysed. Ours came back 0.2 parts per billion and theirs came back 0.1 part per billion. We jumped up and down; ours were twice as high; the laboratory in Hobart was not certified to test for atrazine whereas the Melbourne laboratory was."
"..because the atrazine was definitely there and there was a discrepancy, after the next rain a week or so later DELM authorised a dual sample. They took samples from a number of sites and sent one of each to Melbourne and Hobart laboratories. Forestry wanted to show how responsible t hey were and genuinely wanted to look at it and get it right. Paul Smith had used this 0.2 parts per billion benchmark and the next result was way over. It was 9.3 parts per billion; nearly five times the World Health Organisation allowable limit.
The following agreement was made between Lorinna Community and the Forestry Commission on Future Management of Gads Hill Eucalypt Plantations. It was dated February 1994 -
'In response to the concerns of the community the Forestry Commission will not use 1080 poison, herbicides, fertilisers or synthetic pyrethrum based on chemicals in the catchments that supply water to the community. Biological control agents (Bacillus) may be used to control leaf eating beetles if growth of the plantations is threatened by defoliation.
The Eucalypt plantation, Gads Hill, has been established to grow sawlog. Thinning and pruning of selected trees will be required to promote sawlog growth.
..In the event that full funding for non-commercial thinning is not available, the Lorinna Community have offered to non-commercially thin the plantation within the catchments that supply the water to the community. That being the case, the Forestry Commission will facilitate training to enable residents of Lorinna to gain appropriate accreditation to carry out the operation . . .'
As for our water supply, Forestry installed activated carbon filter cylinders that required back flushing twice a day. For the first three weeks they reduced the level of atrazine. DELM tested the water pre-filter and post-filter every 10 days. After three weeks about 60% of the atrazine present in the water was coming through the activated carbon filters which were the only commercial filters which claimed to remove atrazine. After they were showing 60% we didn't want one anymore.