Videos posted to social media appear to show most of the 500 drones,operated by the Australian Traffic Network,entering auto-land mode and falling into the water. The company said there was no safety risk to the public.
But Charlotte Sterrett,who leads the Yarra Riverkeeper Association’s advocacy to protect the river’s health,said it was unacceptable that several hundred lithium batteries were polluting the river.
“Those batteries have metals such as cobalt,nickel and manganese,which are toxic and can contaminate water supplies and ecosystems,” she said. “There’s going to be immediate impacts on the ecosystem and all the animals and plants that live there,so it’s extremely concerning.”
Sterrett said it was vital that all drones were recovered and that similar shows did not take place over water until there was an assurance the same thing would not happen again.
“I do wonder what the risk management plan was. This shouldn’t have happened in the first place and we need to learn from that,” she said.
Australian Traffic Network’s Victorian CEO,Vic Lorusso,said the company lost around 350 of its drones and was still investigating what went wrong. The drones did the correct thing by entering auto-land and hitting the water when they encountered the glitch and there was never any safety risk to the public,he said.