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A Heroine for the Tasmania Garden

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I did not expect to meet a heroine similar to Joan of Arc in remote Tasmania. But, using common sense and a kitchen-table office, an ordinary schoolteacher confronted an industrial giant.

On this isolated island of ancient timber and rolling farmland off the southeast tip of Australia, she and other concerned residents defeated plans to build a $1-billion paper mill. In declaring she had had enough of pollution, Christine Milne became Tasmanian of the Year.

Tasmania, about the size of Ohio, is the food-growing garden of Australia, but agriculture alone cannot offset chronic unemployment. To create jobs, government and industry generated large projects--smelters, mines, paper mills, hydroelectric dams--all of which operated with little environmental control.

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Beaches bubbled with chemical froth as the effluent of paper manufacturing and other industries washed back to shore. Rivers were choked with the orange waste of copper mining. When a huge paper mill--billed as Australia’s largest manufacturing project--was proposed for the state of Wesley Vale, Milne decided to act.

Born on a farm in the Wesley Vale area, Milne knew the value of unadulterated, fertile earth. But she also knew the importance of paper, not to mention employment. She did not oppose the mill per se; her enemy was lack of foresight.

According to local accounts, the Wesley Vale project would eventually have consumed a sixth of Tasmania’s remaining forests. Wood would have been treated with toxic organochlorine chemicals, and waste water expelled to the sea. A smokestack 100 meters high would have coughed up gases to settle on prized farmland.

The more Milne studied paper production, the more she became convinced that the mill would irreparably harm the environment, and that its technology could be vastly improved. Supported by her husband, she left teaching to work on the issue full time.

She helped form a group called CROPS (Concerned Residents Opposing Pulp Siting), which began probing local and federal governments on the approval process for the plant. Meanwhile, Milne’s kitchen table piled ever higher with documents: cost/benefit analyses promising jobs, environmental impact statements prepared by the plant corporation promising a clean plant.

She challenged it all, debating officials on television point for point. Public opinion followed her, and key government reports also critical of the mill plans were leaked to the press. The Department of Sea Fisheries said of an environmental impact statement, “The document’s treatment of the possible effects of the proposed development on the marine environment is a collection of superficial, unsubstantiated, untested and unacceptable claims.”

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Eventually 10,000 Tasmanians marched against the mill. And, amazingly, they won.

The Australian government announced it would impose stricter controls on the plant. In turn, the Australian-Canadian operators of the plant stated they could not afford improvements in “state of the art” technology. The project died.

When I met Milne, she was fresh from victory, though not planning to relax her vigilance since she believed the giant was “only dormant.” She even intimated to me she was considering running for office to ensure it did not rouse again. Refusing to be labeled a “greenie,” she remained cool and pleasant under pressure, juggling her roles as mother, wife and activist. She simply holds that Tasmania can do better.

“I believe we can grow trees and I believe we can treat the effluent in such a way that we will not damage the environment. Thus, we’ll protect the environment, we’ll protect the existing native forest of Tasmania, and we’ll also have paper. It may be a little more money now, but in the end it will be to the advantage of mankind,” she said.

I realize that without paper this column could never be read, but I also know we are running out of clean air and water. Armed with facts and passion, citizens in Tasmania stopped a billion-dollar plant from being built in the wrong way in the wrong place. Even at the deep end of the world, deep-rooted people reacted in time to protect what is left of their resources. They proved that heroines and heroes are not larger than life at all, but that heroism resides in the common heart and mind, waiting to be tapped.

In fighting for their environment, ordinary people like Christine Milne seem to be leaving their leaders behind and, in the process, they become leaders themselves.

In May, Milne, running as an independent candidate, was elected to the Tasmanian state parliament.

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