While Sydney’s Rockdale Council is defacing the western foreshore of Botany Bay with a 100-vehicle car park for restaurant patrons, environmental vandals are working feverishly to destroy the bay’s northern shores.

The Sydney Ports Corporation is proceeding with a 63-hectare expansion of the ship terminals at Port Botany, covering an area twice the size of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Newly-affected areas include pristine beachfront land at Foreshore Beach and Penrhyn Spit and a sizeable chunk of historic Banksmeadow, named after Sir Joseph Banks who recorded a profusion of native flora there.

Offshore, the expansion includes the area where the Orica toxic plume — Australia’s largest ever chemical spill — enters Botany Bay. Already scientists estimate that it will take many decades to clean up the spill, and the port development can only lengthen the process.

First mooted by the SPC under the Carr government, the expansion proposal was so dubious both environmentally and logistically that it was the subject of a 2004-5 Commission of Inquiry. Its report, delivered first to Carr’s planning minister Craig Knowles and then to his replacement Frank Sartor, recommended against the full expansion backed by both SPC and Treasury.

Commissioner Kevin Cleland’s recommendation would have preserved the Foreshore Beach and Penrhyn Spit areas.

Local conservation groups, notably Save Botany Beach and Botany Environment Watch, also made submissions against the development to an upper house inquiry into ports, to the Enfield inquiry conducted by former state transport minister Milton Morris and to an IPART inquiry concluded in 2007.

Logistics experts documented a host of strategic difficulties which included proximity to the airport’s third runway, a lack of adequate transport infrastructure and a strong case for developing Port Kembla instead.

But in the face all the evidence the SPC, with the insistent backing of then state Treasurer Michael Costa, decided to ignore Cleland’s recommendation and proceed with the larger area of expansion at Botany. Short-term concerns about competition with Melbourne and Brisbane overrode any attempt at an integrated plan for NSW infrastructure.

Last August the SPC announced that dredging was about to begin. Greens NSW leader Lee Rhiannon argued at the time that this would exacerbate the difficulty of cleaning up the Orica toxic plume and destroy irreplaceable native habitat. Now comes news that the work is already affecting wildlife, driving the rare and threatened Little Tern off Penrhyn Spit.

Enter federal Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese, husband of NSW deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt. In October he invited submissions from the public to the National Infrastructure Priority List, which is due to be submitted to the Council of Australian Governments this March. The Save Botany Beach campaign has encouraged locals to make their own submissions against continuation of the Port Botany expansion. We’ll soon see whether “Albo” has taken the slightest notice of them.