Four years on from the destruction of hectares of mangrove forest in Adelaide’s north the environment protection authority has reached a 100-thousand-dollar civil settlement against a salt mining company. An environmental study has been ordered to monitor the site, but community groups say the action doesn't go far enough.
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00:00A centuries-old landscape marked with a modern-day scar.
00:07The trees behind me that are dead, some of them 200 years pre-European in age, and they're
00:13never going to come back.
00:14Miriam Yip has been monitoring the St Kilda mangroves north of Adelaide since a die-back
00:20event began in 2020, but beneath the decaying branches, she's seeing new signs of life.
00:27We have propagules or baby mangroves that are coming up, and we are actually seeing
00:32that in the dead areas.
00:34Nine hectares of mangroves and ten hectares of salt marsh were killed off when hypersaline
00:40water from a neighbouring salt mining company leaked into the ground.
00:46The Environment Protection Authority has now finished its investigation into the incident,
00:51ending long-running legal action against the mining operator Buckland Dry Creek.
00:57We undertook a significant amount of investigative work to determine this outcome.
01:01The operator has paid $100,000 towards an environmental study of the site over the next
01:08three years as the outcome of a civil settlement.
01:12The EPA's investigation found the leaking of salt water was a key contributor to the
01:18die-back.
01:19The interactions of the salt fields as well as the mangroves is really complex, that's
01:24why we couldn't solely rule it out as the only contributor.
01:27South Australia's Environment Minister, Susan Clow, said she was satisfied the settlement
01:33will help manage the risk of future harm to the mangroves, but community members were
01:38hoping to see more investment into recovery efforts.
01:42We just want some amelioration.
01:44We want some action, and nothing has happened in the past four years.
01:48Future fears for a threatened ecosystem.