BACK DOWN: The Federal Government has relaxed environmental conditions after a mining company threatened to walk away from its $15 billion project.
Documents tabled in Federal Parliament last week show that at least one of the three projects approved had raised its own concerns about shallow groundwater contamination from salt ponds and chemical and fuel storage sites associated with processing plants.
There have also been warnings that underground acquifers would be so depleted by the projects that it could take centuries to replenish them.
“If not adequately managed and regulated, it risks having significant, long-term and adverse impacts on adjacent surface and groundwater systems,” the NWC said.
“Queensland has a long history of non-enforcement of environmental regulation with regard to the mining industry which, basically, regulates itself,” Drew Hutton said. “This industry is too big and too powerful to be effectively regulated.”
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The peak national advisory body on water issues has warned the coal seam gas industry could have a “significant” impact on surface and groundwater if not managed properly.
“We also recognise that if not adequately managed and regulated, the industry risks significant, long-term and adverse impacts on surface and groundwater systems.”
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It was “extraordinary” that such valuable food-producing land was being placed at risk when world populations were escalating and global freshwater reserves and agricultural land was disappearing, Dr Stanley said.
An environmental lawyer by profession, Ms Waters criticised the Queensland Government’s approval of mining developments before questions about their large potential impacts had been answered, and its decision to adopt an “adaptive” management approach instead.
“I have a lot of difficulty with adaptive management, which says ‘let’s approve it, if they muck it up, they can make good’,” she said.
“Well how do you make good? When the groundwater table drops, how do you fix that?”
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Laws allowing miners to enter properties in Queensland are “incredibly draconian” and ignore the rights of landholders, the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties (QCCL) says.
Amendments to the law mean that when a dispute over a miner’s right of entry to a property reaches the Land Court it automatically gives miners a right of entry to that property before the court even begins to hear the dispute.
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“The LNP (Liberal National Party), in particular, have sold out their true believers – the Queensland farmer in regional Queensland – to please the mining companies that fund them.”
“The Queensland Party will stand up for them and continue to call for a moratorium until it is certain that there will be no long-term adverse environmental impact from the coal seam gas industry and genuine consultation has taken place with landowners.”
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“Handing the job to the Government’s Water Commission is completely inappropriate because the Water Commission was established to set water restrictions for householders in urban Brisbane – not oversee the protection of streams and aquifers in areas of CSG activities.”
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“This community has nowhere else to go.
“They can either resist non-violently or see QGC move onto their properties rendering them unsaleable and forcing them to live cheek-by-jowl with coal seam gas infrastructure the rest of their lives.”
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ENVIRONMENT and Water Minister Tony Burke was warned by his department of “significant concerns” that $35 billion of coal-seam gas projects in Queensland could damage water supplies, cause land subsidence and interfere with reforms in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Advice from the Water Group within Mr Burke’s department said the companies had been “extremely conservative” in their estimates of how much water they would take from the Great Artesian Basin. The minister’s department said it could be “at least 1000 years” before water levels recovered.
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Speaking in Brisbane today, Greens leader Bob Brown accused the state and federal governments of greedily pushing ahead with the money-spinning projects without fully understanding the environmental and health impacts.
Senator Brown said he wrote to federal Environment Minister Tony Burke last week calling for a national moratorium on further exploration of coal and coal seam gas.
“Until he knows what the cost is, until he knows what the loss of farmland is, until he knows what the dangers are to the water systems of the Murray Darling Basin,” Senator Brown said.
“The government needs to slow down.
“There are valid concerns from … all across Queensland, (people) who are worried that this state is turning into a quarry for the world’s pollution and not a source of clean energy and a source of food for us and others.”
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Mr Armstrong says far less concern is being shown over the risk to the environment, water tables and the health of rural children impacted by the state’s mining bonanza.
“It’s the biggest challenge to face rural Queensland – its industrialisation – for foreign interests,” he said.
“And until (Minister) Robertson and (Premier) Bligh acknowledge that, and stop saying ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ and realise that job re-location is not job creation, the better.
“Growers will be refusing to negotiate with companies that won’t guarantee that there won’t be any effects on our aquifers….”
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Mining on farm land