Objectors hit $18m tanks bid

JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
A BULK liquid storage company plans an $18 million expansion in Geelong to cope with “dramatically increased” demand.
A Terminals spokesman said the expansion would include four tanks for bitumen, two for coal tar pitch and storage of aviation fuel, called avgas.
The company has two planning permit applications before City of Greater Geelong.
An application to store the avgas has gone to Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal because council failed to make a decision within 60 days. The application attracted three objections.
The Terminals spokesman said the expansion was “a major investment in the future of the site and commitment to Geelong industry”.
The plans included extra storage for liquid fertiliser Easy N, he said.
The expansion would result in a minimum 13 extra truck movements at the company’s Corio site each weekday.
The total bitumen tank capacity would be 21,000 cubic metres in two 22-metre high tanks of 10,000 cubic metres each and a further two of 500 cubic metres, with a total cost of $8 million to $12 million.
The applications said the 13-metre-high, $6 million avgas tank would remove the need to use a 57-kilometre pipe to Newport.
“The site is ideally situated to receive and store avgas because of existing dedicated pipelines, tanker loading gantry and other infrastructure,” Terminals said.
“Terminals is proposing to build a 5000-cubic-metre internal floating roof storage tank that will be constructed to strict international safety standards as stipulated by government regulations.”
The company has storage tanks containing butadiene, vinyl chloride monomer, mono-ethylene glycol, caustic soda and isopropyl alcohol.
Suzanne Kelly-Turned, president of newly formed Geelong Chemical Action Network, confirmed the organisation had objected to the expansion.
“We also plan to lodge a submission to EPA prior to it issuing a works approval to Terminals,” she said.