The following comes from the ABC (journalist is Rosemary Bolger). It chronicles the latest stage in the decades long campaign to have the dam waters above Lake Pedder in south west Tasmania drained so that the original lake and ecosystem can be restored.

Check here for details on the campaign to have the lake restored.

A long-running campaign to drain Lake Pedder and return the natural jewel of Tasmania’s south-west to its former glory is ramping up again.

Despite opposition from a small group of environmentalists, the lake’s still waters were swallowed up in 1972 by a massive inland sea created to supply the Gordon Power Station.

Harnessing the power of the green movement that emerged from the failed campaign, protesters went on to wage one of the biggest environmental fights in Australia to block the damming of the Franklin River.

Now the Tasmanian Greens have vowed to put the issue back on the political agenda.

Greens MP Nick McKim has called on Hydro Tasmania to conduct a feasibility study.

“What we really need now is a much broader, much more well-informed debate and the government has a real role to play here,” he said.

“That’s why we need the government to support Hydro Tasmania to step in here and do some work on things like technical feasibility, engineering design and potential costings.”

More than 43 years after the lake, with its striking pink sands was flooded, the original campaigners remain determined to restore what was lost to the Hydro scheme expansion.

Adam Beeson, of the Lake Pedder Restoration Committee, said public support for the idea is growing.

Check here for the full article.