Thursday 1 December 2005
NT News
by Nigel Adlam

ONE of the sites earmarked for a nuclear waste facility is geologically unsound and potted with sink holes, a politician said yesterday.

One of the sink holes, which consumed trees when it opened up, was as big as a basketball pitch, Labor's Rob Knight said.

The site is at Fishers Ridge, 40km south of Katherine. It lies on Defence land in the middle of a small cattle station, Yeltu.

Mr Knight said he was shocked when he visited the proposed nuclear waste site. ``It's honeycombed limestone country,'' he said. ``It's geologically unsound.''

Property owners Barry and Val Utley are in their 60s and have semi-retired to run about 900 head of cattle on the station.

``They've worked hard all their lives in the Territory and now have a nuclear dump whacked on them,'' Mr Knight said.

Mr Utley had to fight back tears when he gave evidence by video-conference to a Senate inquiry in to the waste depository.

He said he feared his cattle would be unsaleable. Mr Knight said the site was close to both the Little Roper and King rivers.

Chief Minister Clare Martin told Parliament the Defence Department had told the Senate inquiry that only Federal Government bureaucrats had chosen the Fishers Ridge site.

``Nobody with a nuclear science background was there,'' she said.

``This is a rubbish decision.''

Solomon MLA Dave Tollner, who voted for the nuclear waste facility in the House of Representatives, criticised the NT Government's stance and said the Government should contact South Australian Premier Mike Rann and lobby him to reconsider his refusal to allow the facility to be built in his jurisdiction.

Ms Martin criticised the CLP for not making a submission to the Senate inquiry.