Understandably the news of the Victorian fires has tended to suppress news of the floods in North Queensland. No-one is complaining about that. But apart from an inundation the size of South Australia that has lasted now for 8 weeks, with stock losses and other devastation (the “bill” I heard recently was $210 million and counting), a new threat has emerged, the toxic overflow from at least 10 open cut mines in the area.
The Environmental Protection Agency has already ordered landowners downstream of the Lady Annie copper mine, 120km north of Mt Isa, not to drink water from or swim in Saga and Inca creeks and to destock paddocks. A helicopter is being used to take samples and graziers are talking about fish kills 20km from the Annie mine, acid eating away at steel pickets and water 1m deep pouring off the site.
Other mines in the northwest minerals province the EPA says have discharged contaminated material are the Great Australia Mine, Birla Mt Gordon, Ernest Henry Mine, MIM, Century Mine, Leichhardt Mine, Selwyn Mine, Lorena Mine and the Yurbi concentrate rail loading facility.
So people can’t drink from their normal water supply and paddocks bordering contaminated streams have to be cleared of stock. The burgeoning organic beef industry in the area is at risk from residual contamination.
On the radio this morning I heard a rural representative say quite apart from all this that re-stocking would take about 5 years. It’s possible that with climate change these extreme events will happen more frequently. We really don’t know.
Yet another unplanned side-effect of the mining boom.
Last year the floods came further south, covering the Fitzroy river basin which flows into the sea at Rockhampton, an area about the size of Victoria. Many of the open cut coal mines became inland lakes. Later I understand the stuff was quietly pumped into the river with the connivance of the EPA (?) with stream toxicity levels many times the allowable. That was according to a blog comment from someone who lives in the area, but it sounds credible.
Currently XStrata are proceeding with an open cut coal mine in the Wandoan area which will turn a large slab of prime food producing land into a moonscape. It is also in the headwaters of the Dawson River, one of the main tributaries of the Fitzroy, an area that I know because I grew up just south of there can be subject to heavy rainfall.
Where does the public interest lie in all this and what should be done in a public policy sense?
Update: Still@downfall has drawn my attention to an article from The North West Star via Brisbane Times about pollution of streams in North West Queensland. This is what Verdun Spreadborogh found when he returned to his property near Mt Isa after being cut off for two months:
Chidna station
The blue is of course caused by copper contamination, but there could also be other heavy metals present.
“I run 1000 head of cattle in that part of the property and they drink from the creek and we don’t know how harmful this stuff is” Mr Spreadborogh told The North West Star last week.
He said there were also people living downstream.
That is horribly sad. Who would have ever thought that that could happen? here in our clean land. That is going to take some cleaning up. Good thing that we have bio char.
Brian, this is terrible and shocking news. My heart goes out to those poor people affected, and affected by the floods in Queensland generally.
I’m not over-familiar with the mining industry in Queensland, except Gladstone where I worked digging a pipeline for months in my wasted and much-traveled youth.( I also tried boiler-making in Townsville and selling Mater Art Union tickets in Brisbane, but that’s by the by.)
Are there uranium mines anywhere in the flooded areas? That would possibly be even worse. And is a cautionary tales for places where there are uranium mines, and the danger of flooding.
Imagine what would happen with a nuclear spill.
It’s not just a blog comment Brian: for chapter and verse the report on the Ensham Mine incident and it’s effect on the Fitzroy basin is by Professor Barry Hart.
Even a Queensland Health (and you don’t get much more storm trooperish for Bligh et al than them,) public health czar, Margaret Young, pointed the finger at the mine’s “dewatering” procedure as a health hazard.
The report can’t say straight out that the EPA was leant on by Qld cabinet and treasury to expedite getting the coal and it’s royalties happening asap, but y’know, has Skippy got ticks?
Like the mining industry gives a toss about the environment… yeh, right.
Paul Burns and Helen – just a small note to say that Uranium wouldn’t necessarily be the worst. The biggest problem with mine flooding like this is the release of other more toxic heavy metals (lead/cadmium/etc are classics) that will tend to be readily concentrated in silt deposits. These deposits (depending on water depth, flow, etc) would probably end up in a higher-concentration plume downstream of the mines. As for the tailing dams……nasty…
I’d be interested to see some ICP analysis of the soils “downstream” after the event (dust storms could be a real problem).
No way in hell I’d be drinking the water.
The tailing dams associated with all open cut mining operations should be flood proof but we know from previous leakages at Jabiluka/Ranger that this isn’t the case. NSW open cut coal mines operate under a salinity trading scheme that allows them to dispose of their tailing dam water during peak Hunter River flows, thereby diluting their shit downstream. It operates a bit like an ETS but participation is voluntary. Most belong.
I don’t know how they do it in Queensland but this report suggests open slather in the sunshine state.
Could there ever be a rain event in the north of a magnitude sufficient to fill Lake Eyre? And could that in turn overflow down to lake Torrens and lake Frome and eventually the Gulf at Pt Augusta? Olympic Dam at Roxby Downs would be a slight problem..No?..Just supposin’.
zorronsky, to take yours first, I gather that when Lake Eyre fills the water usually comes from Queensland via the Georgina and Diamantina Rivers and Cooper Creek. This map gives you some idea of the layout. The Cooper catchment starts just near Charters Towers. Here’s another map showing the whole area. The Georgina starts around Camoweal to the north-west of Mt Isa. (Some spectacular shots here.)
This site is the best I found on Lake Eyre. The lake itself is below sea level and the area is so large that I couldn’t imagine it ever spreading south to the Gulf.
The linked article quotes the mayor of Boulia (west of Longreach) complaining about crap coming down the Georgina, but I think most of the inland floods this time were in the vast area that drains into the Gulf of Carpentaria to the north.
Paul B, there was a uranium mine at Mary Kathleen but it’s done and dusted and, they claim, rehabilitated. I think there are other known deposits but the Bligh govt is against uranium mining. Not sure anyone has asked The Borg.
pablo, that’s interesting about the Hawkesbury. The Dawson River catchment has a rainfall of only 600 to 750mm. I can’t imagine there would be enough regular water to flush the muck down the river and right out to sea in an acceptably diluted form. I expect that they’d have to rely on evaporation, which is normally pretty fierce. But the area can get a big dump of rain from time to time, which is where the fun begins.
Danny, thanks for that. I had other glimmerings in the memory banks but the blog comment was the one I was sure about.
Thanks Brian. Excellent links and the Warburton River shots are indeed spectacular. I spent time on a station on the Finke [Lilla Ck] years ago and the Simpson desert, sand hills, gorges, gibber plains and ancient flat top mountains melded together[with the river] over [relatively] short distances on the property. I would have loved to have been high enough on the pecking order to have seen it all from the air but had to settle for 375 suzuki and horseback. Saw the area in flood and so the tongue in cheek earlier comment.
The QLD EPA should be heavy-ing the mining companies for precise information about the spills, or better getting warrants to get this information themselves, as past records will show mining companies will fight any remedial costs and liabilities.
One would have thought that their tailings dams would have been built to withstand even the most extreme rainfall and subsequent flooding levels. And if not, then why not? And if so, were any of these storage dams too full at the time of the flooding etc?
Australians aren’t used to mining waste being dumped into aquifers, rivers and oceans, we are however used to the living off the profits of these practices still used in developing countries by our mining companies – i.e.. riverine and submarine tailings disposal is just about standard operating practice in PNG. (For another discussion however)
Here at home though, one only has to see how BHP avoided paying for the on-going costs associated when longwall mining (coal) caused cracking in a few rivers in the Sydney water catchment and totally ruined a wild river up there – the NSW Govt flogged them with a lettuce leaf and a lot of the official information was suppressed from the public view.
Hopefully QLD graziers and farmers have enough clout up there to find out what/ why and how etc.
As to the longer term and issues of allowing mining on and around prime farming/grazing districts, in national parks or state forests, close to aquifers, rivers etc and us continually insisting on higher standards in relation to mining waste (and practices like cyanide leaching), water usage, and all other environmental controls (and also what we do and what we invest in overseas) – there just isn’t the public awareness or an established constituency which can keep these issues in the spotlight or seemingly given any clout by any Environment Minister in the country. And with the CFMEU in bed with the mining companies to a very large degree other than on wages and OH&S, these are now ‘Green’ issues exclusively. The Greens usually band together with whichever small community is going to be effected by whatever mining operation to lobby whichever State Government, and then the circus moves on, but the the overall policies don’t change – which seem to add up to overall – just dig it up!
I’m sorry to say Jo that QLD graziers and farmers do not have enough clout to have much influence on the frenzy haste of mining companies & Government to dig up the land. In our society to have clout you need economical, political or celeberity status & very little of this exists in rural Australia. This is of great frustration to those of us who are literally living close to the coalface. Under the widebrim hats of graziers & farmers there exists an acculumuated intergeneration store of knowelege that always knew of the possibility of events that have unfolded as related by Brian.
I live near the proposed Wandoan open cut mine. Local knoweledge reveals many inadequacies in the Enviromental Impact Statement. There is great sadness as a huge hole is to be placed across a very productive landscape, a community is torn apart with 30 families displaced. Of great disappointment is the complete inadequacy of legislation or intent to rehabilitate the land once the coal is mined out.
I attended a one of a series mining forums that were held across the Surat basin late last year. It was a revelation the degree the EPA is weakened to the almost complete appeasement to the big mining companies. Government influence, in need of mining royalties? I well believe what Brian has written, it is set to be repeated.
This is website of another community nearby & their story http://www.coal4breakfast.com.au/
On Fiday evening there was a segment on this issue on Stateline. I got the impression that it is a case of stream pollution rather than toxic waste spreading across the land as indicated in the title of my post. Queensland is a big place. I’ve only paid a flying visit once each to Mt Isa and Longreach, so I don’t know the area well. My impression is that the 10 mines are around the Mt Isa-Cloncurry minerals province, where according to the map the landscape is elevated and drains both south and north.
Jo, it’s a low rainfall area, but the current event shows what can happen on occasions. It strikes me that the whole Environmental Impact Statement process is ridden with conflicts of interest. The miner would I think get a third party to prepare the EIS, so it’s a case of polluter pays. The government approves, but they have an interest in jobs, royalties, infrastructure development etc. I’m not sure of the role of the EPA, or how independent they are, but I suspect they have no influence on the approval process. Does anyone know?
It strikes me that Slater and Gordon might be interested in a class action against the miners and perhaps the Government, if there is anything in it for them.
still@downfall, your moniker means something to me. I’ve got to go out for the rest of the day, but I had seen that site you linked to and will comment further tonight.
Re: Coal vs Agriculture in Qld.
There was a discussion here some months back about the coal->dimethylether opencut mine and plant at Felton, which is near your neck of the woods I think s@d.
Check this out for seeing how epa shepherds these things through
For the record, the LNP shadow climate and environment minister, Gibson, came on here and wrote that personally he was against mining on good agricultural land. Which is more than McNamara would do.
To following is to quantify the possibility of a future event of floodwater washing toxic waste from the proposed Wandoan open cut mine.
I do not have the exact figure but it is my belief that in it’s Environmental impact statement, Xstrata stated, that a one in one hundred rainfall event for a 24 hour period would be a maximum of 100 mm. Here are the exact figures as recorded on a rainfall chart on a farm in what is the mining lease area:
1st Dec. 2005, 195 mm
2nd Dec. 2005, 35 mm
16th Dec.2005’ 180 mm
18th Jan. 2006, 156 mm
That is a total of 566 mm falling over a short period of time.
Yet at the Mining forum held late last year in response to these accounts by local landholders, Xstrata’s Environmental manager for the Wandoan operation Stated “Those kind of rainfall events don’t happen”.
I assure you these kind of rainfall event were recorded in dairy’s & rainfall charts over the proposed mine site.
Danny, thanks for that. You are a mine of information!
To summarise then, the EPA is a state government department, pure and simple (organisational structure here.) The EPA facilitates the production of an EIS, gathers public comment, and makes a recommendation to government. The whole process is set up under Commonwealth legislation, which requires that the Commonwealth environment minister would have to give approval. But presumably the project would also require state government approval where the EIS would be taken into account.
But the substance of the EIS would be written by the applicant (polluter) or whoever they commission to do the work.
If I’ve got that wrong, please correct me.
Danny, personal opinions are one thing, but does the Borg have a policy on the issue?
still@downfall @ 15, that’s impressive precipitation. I recall back in the 1950s when we first started to grow cotton seriously we had 9 inches (225mm) in three days and the cotton grew as high as the elephant’s eye.
But we are told that with global warming we can expect longer droughts and more intense rainfall at times, and it’s my impression that is what has happened.
It’s imteresting that when faced with fact you get direct lies from the Xstrata bloke.
To give a bit of context to the coal/food thing, all the instances mentioned are in the northern part of the Surat Basin. I can’t find a decent map that shows all the relevant locations, but this one from Anglo Coal and Mitsui gives an overall view. But if you go to Google maps and find directions from Wandoan to Toowoomba it fills in some of the gaps.
The Xstrata oen cut mine is to be at Grosmont, just north of Wandoan, but I’m told comes within 500 metres of Wandoan.
The ‘coal4breakfast’ group are at Haystack Plains, which is north of Warra (between Chinchilla and Dalby). The land is seriously flat there with deep, rich black soil.
Felton, mentioned by Danny, is about 30km SW of Toowoomba.
The point is that if you google you find that Origin Energy, Santos and other players, big and small, have tenements right through the area, for coal, coal seam gas etc, so there is going to be plenty more of the same. It’s a large area and some of the most fertile and productive dry farming land in our fair country. One wonders what the Climate Change group, headed by the premier’s husband and stuck like a carbuncle on one side of the EPA organisation chart, think about all this.
Update on one of the sites toxic waste was washed out of retaing dams on the ABC Country Hour today, that is at Copper Creek mine. Click on the following link for story. The audio link on this page is more interesting.
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/qld/northwest/
Danny & Brian @ 17. As far as the proposed Wandoan mine is concerned both political party’s will proceed with it. Royalties are worth too much. Even at start up with low coal prices the Government is likely to rake in $60 million/ year. At full production and better coal prices it will be an impressive $200 million.
It will be the bggest mine in the southern hemisphere. But even knowing this you will not get your head around the size of operation unless you see the amount of good land to be destroyed. Perhaps someone could work out how big it is against the sprawling city of Brisbane.
Bloody hell, still@downfall that’s a big freaking coal mine they are planning!
20m-30m tonnes p.a – that’s about the same output as Correjon in Colombia – a BHPB joint venture with Anglo Amercian and recently new partner… Xstrata – and is one of the biggest coal mines in the world.
I had a quick look at the Chapter headings of the EIS, there is a chapter called ‘Visual Amenity’ which is about 21mgs to download – which I didn’t. But I looked at a map called Tenure Mapping in Volume 1, Chapter 8 Land Use – which shows the mining leases laid over the district map – but you’d need to go through properly to find the right info – leases doesn’t mean the operation etc.
Here is also a link to the ‘biggest open cut mines’ blah on wiki – maybe you can do the maths from the EIS, if Xstrata are being shy about providing a decent mock-up of what the operation will eventually look like. Most of these super mines have lots of pics with their dimensions, in wiki or on the web etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-pit_mining
And here is a speech from Michael Roche, Chief Executive, Queensland Resources Council from last July, at the Mining 2020 International Conference – bit of an overview of how the industry sees itself going forward in Qld.
[Here's the link Brian]
The link above is broken – you’ll have to manually paste the last bits on
As I mentioned way above, most communities go it alone either with some help from activists or the Greens – here is a community organisation which seems to be fairly together – this project is very close to population areas on the Central Coast of NSW.
http://www.australiancoalalliance.com/main.htm
I note they already have Barry O’Farrell against it – so if they can delay the start of the operation until a change of Govt……..
I also note Garrett recently re-approved McArthur River mine in the NT another controversial Xstrata operation which involved changing the course of the river, and which the Federal Court ruled against the previous Fed Environ. Min. on a technicality – the action was mounted by the local indigenous peoples.
Hey Brian,
You may have come across this in your travels, I just found it – so in case you hadn’t seen it:
Dept. Environment, Water, Heritage & Arts – “National Pollution Inventory”
You can search the 2006/07 database by postcode/region whatever for pollution by type, industry sector etc.
http://www.npi.gov.au/overview/view.html
#15 – would be interesting to see a source for this. If you go to the hydrology section of the Bureau of Meteorology website and feed Wandoan’s coordinates into the section dealing with rainfall intensity and frequency, it produces a 1-in-100 year 24-hour rainfall just under 200 mm (indeed, the 1-in-100 year 1-hour rainfall is around 80 mm), with a 24-hour total in excess of 100 mm being somewhere between a 1 in 2 and a 1 in 5 year event.
#22 Jo, yes it is a freaking big coal mine. Xstrata is looking to mine at least 30 million tonnes p.a. for it to be very profitable. For every million tonne p.a. over that they will really be raking it in.
The estimated land area of the site has varied over time, it will be only known for sure after they have finished buying everyone out. But if we go on the original estimates Xstrata were wishing to purchase 30 000 hectares with 20 000 of it to be mined.
I do not know if in urban Australia you can visualize a hectare. How many square metres is the average suburbian block? How many of them go into the 100 x 100 metres that make up a hectare & then x it by 20 000. That will be how many city allotments will be dug up in this mine.
still@downfall – lots of the information you are conjecturing about will be in the EIS. They are probably still buying up to expand at some future time, but the EIS will show what they are planning to construct up there, if (when) they granted a permit etc.
If this mine directly affects you, you really should be reading the entire EIS through with a fine tooth comb and also trying to make contact with other groups who have already done the hard yards on these types of campaigns in the past and also possibly the Qld Conservation Council, the Greens etc.. gads, there is a QLD election campaign, hello Wandoans?
I just found this info after a very quick skim of the Exec Summary, but as I said the usage might change if they are allowed to expand the mine at some future date.
” Figure 1: Locality Plan of Key Project Components” in the summary shows just how big the project is if anyone is interested – a rough comparison – Noosa Shire is 87,000 hectares.
Other flag waving issues – their raw water supplies – there are three options being considered – the Glebe Weir raising involves flooding creeks and all sorts of issues – 150ha of Cockatoo Creek etc and this a gem:
So they can’t even guarantee that the operations won’t be effecting water supplies outside the MLA area? Hmm.
They also have to abide by Native Title Legislation, apparently the Inan people (?) are the mob affected amongst a raft of other controls. Personally, I’d be looking very closely at the issues of threatened species, water supply and impacts of taking water from their preferred options, and also the impacts of the mining operation on bores and aquifers inside and outside their MLA and in respect of water conservation legislation (?), also the effects of the proposed gas and water pipelines on surrounding lands – 80-90klms etc…the air quality monitoring program (residents will get a hotline to ring up ..for “who wish to
report air quality related incidents” – ie. there shouldn’t be any incidents should there!!…. and also looking the Frank Creek Pit which apparently is going to be the closest to the town.
Anyway, that’s enough from me. Best of luck.
btw. you might be surprised how many LP’ers live on the land or in regional areas (quite a lot!) … but not me however.
#26 Blair. To answer your question about # 15 fully I need to find out what Xstrata believes a 1 in a 100 rainfall event is in their EIS.
Simular rainfall amounts to the ones I quoted in #15 fell over several farms within what is now the mine lease area. Wandoan itself recorded far less rain. Although graziers & farmers are not known for doing paperwork the rainfall chart is the exception. The person I sourced these actual figures from is known for his care in record keeping.
The purpose in using these figures is to illustrate the possibility of toxic waste being washed out of a the proposed Wandoan open cut mine as has occurred at Ensham Mine in Central Qld last year & what is currently happening in the North West.
In the example I used water swamped straight over the top of earthen banks built to stop soil erosion. Xstrata plans to use simular banks to stop run off from around the mine site. Water tore away the banks of farm dams & left the water go. Xstrata plans to use dams to hold contaminated water.
There are other examples I could use eg. Easter 1983.
Thanks folks.
The way I figure the hole in the ground is this.
100 metres is 0.1 kilometres, right? So 0.1 x 0.1 will give you 0.01 sq kms. Multiply that by 20,000 and you get 200 sq kms. That’s either 10 x 20 kms or if you prefer squares it comes out very close to 14.15 kms.
On your USB there’s a red line every 2 kms showing distance from the centre of Brisbane. So if it’s 14 km you get Middle Park (past Jamboree heights), Durack (past Inala) Sunnybank Hills, Wynnum, Bridgeman Downs, Carseldine, Boondall. So take any of them as one side of the square and there you have it.
20 kms gets you past Strathpine to the north or just past Slacks Creek/Springwood to the south if you imagine a rectangle that long and half as wide.
One big hole!
Brian,
The 11,OOO hectares is the total according to the EIS to be used for mining operations – it may be expanded at a later date – their MLA’s cover 32,000.
Even so, the 11,000 hectares would include the pit, processing plants, the storage dams, the overburden, all the roads and other infrastucture etc – I’m not not sure how big the pit is expected to be…..still@downfall will tell us when he/she has the read the entire EIS
jo, did you have a link for the EIS or did I miss it?
There’s another, even more sinister, form of bastardry afoot with this industry in Queensland (Chinchilla this time, LINC is the company) where instead of digging the stuff up, they use basically 40 year old Russian technology ( and haven’t they been shining lights and an example to us all in best practice envronmental stewardship, not) oxidise it underground, harvest the gas produced and turn it into diesel. You don’t see the nasty big hole, therefore it’s clean coal, right?
I happened to catch the press release minutes after it’s public release, and was sick to my stomach with the instant realisation of two things: (1)what we have here, in terms of an overall systems analysis, is diesel in, (a bit, for the machinery) and diesel out, in virtually unlimited amounts when you look at the extent of the coal tenements, and the fact that this process gets gold out of even crap coal. (Oh yes there’s a bit of water involved, quite a lot actually, they seem to think that’s why God put the Great Artesian Basin there, for them to use. See the end of this post** for a story on these guys’, this industry’s, form in adhering to principles of equitable and environmentally sound water use: robber baron is a phrase that springs to mind.) And (2) what an investors’ dream scenario that is, therefore it’s going to happen. IN fact, if you timed it right, you could have doubled your money in 6 weeks. It’s a murky story, just too depressing and distressing to go into, but here’s the shock and awe punch line, and hold on to your breakfast, you might lose it: LINC did a deal with China’s state owned Coal miner Xinwen for (a) selling them the technology to exploit with their own coalfields and (b) “Coal-to-gas and liquid-fuel developer Linc Energy Ltd says it is selling its Bowen Basin exploration tenements in Queensland to China’s state-owned Xinwen Mining Group for $1.5 billion.”
That’s right, all that f’n coal is to be China’s, to do what and how they want, cos it’s not like Wayne Swan or the Queensland government ( and I take your point Brian about it all being very well Gibson having an opinion, but what about the Borgia policy: it’s a start perhaps?) is going to tell them to hold their horses. One thing we have the GFC to be thankful for: it meant Xinwen wasn’t able to make the deposit, the share price has tanked for the moment, but LINC is still trying to flog all that coal some f’n mining authority said was theirs to do whatever they wanted with, for a fee, to anyone with the readies. What China couldn’t pull off, Russia will?
** That post about these bastards and their somewhat cavalier attitudes to alternative uses and users of the land above their f’n precous coal: from a farmer, it would seem, who’s had dealings with them, posting on a forum at the bitterly named coal4breakfast.com.au site:
Danny I saw the LINK thing being spruiked somewhere as a world first. I didn’t know about the Chinese involvement.
Coming from a standing start in terms of knowledge I’ve been trying to work out what’s going on worth the various mining strategies. At the moment there seem to be three.
First, open cut mining puts a huge scar in the landscape. Water has to be brought in (Wandoan is in the headwaters near the great Dividing Range, on the northern side. Xstrata are bringing salty water to wash the coal from the south, which has obvious problems with tailings etc. BTW about a year ago I met an IT bloke who was working on a clever technology here in Brisbane which used a dry sorting process. I understand that it was at the commercialisation stage, saved heaps of money, but too much to expect that the likes of Xstrata would actually use it.
Second there seams to be heaps of coal seam gas, especially around Chinchilla. The gas is in a film of water on the coal surface underground. I don’t know how they get it out, but it produces heaps of water as a by product, which is too salty for general use.There was talk of desalination to supply Toowoomba to let them escape drinking sewerage. There was also talk of growing salt tolerant timber. I suspect that this is the source of Xstrata’a water.
Third, where the coal seam is too deep they can burn it in situ, harvest the gas, liquefy it through cooling, and flog it off overseas. One problem is that the burning f*cks up the underground aquifers so the bores don’t work or are polluted. Bores are typically used for stock to drink and humans too, especially in the towns.
The LINK energy seems a variant on the third. I’d be interested in the net carbon situation with this process. It would have to produce more carbon than pumping fuel out of the desert.
http://www.wandoancoalproject.com.au/eishome.cfm
Brian, link to the EIS – note Exec Summary at bottom.
E#31 Jo. I won’t be finishing a read of the EIS anytime soon. I don’t know if too many have read it from cover to cover. The EIS go to 17 volumes, roughly 890 pages. If you line the printed version up it is around 1.2 metres long. Xstrata paid a consultant big bucks, no doubt to baffle us with bulls**t. From release date to date to get submissions back in was a period of 8 weeks. Neatly in the middle of this time period was Christmas & New Year. What I can pick up around a dozen brave souls in the local community undertook this task. Of the 24 submissions returned 8 were from local individuals & 1 from the Wandoan Liaison Committee, set up to have some input into all the mining & energy development going on around here at the moment
Jo talking to the chair of the Liaison Committee you are close to the mark. 32 000 ha all up & 10 000 in a series of 15 open cut pits. Haulage tracks, dams & all infrastructures will be outside the 10 000ha. So it be 10 000 ha of holes in the ground. Effectively there will be 32 000 ha of the highest production grazing country in Qld lost to Xstrata for 35 years & in an unknown state afterwards.
Going back to the initial thread, that of floodwater & storm surge washing toxic material out of mine sites.
The official Government rainfall records are taken from a town Post Office. In the case of the proposed Wandoan open cut coal mine local knowledge can vouch that built to the specifications that Xstrata proposes in it’s EIS for it’s banks & impoundments, every single one would have been breeched in storm surge events that have happened more than once in the last 30 years.
Most of the water that will impact upon the mine site does not flow through the town of Wandoan. The creek system with the most force is the Woolebe creek which feeds off of hard watershed country at the Giligulgul/ Gurumundi Ranges, part of the Great Dividing Range system. In 1983 11 inches fell overnight up there causing a big flood. The records at the Wandoan Post Office would not show it, as there was minimal rain there.
Don’t forget the Surat Basin Rail EIS is also available for comment. At a minimum corridor width of 60m, it consumes an additional 1,200 ha of land over 210km.
The SBR has a design life of 50 years.
From the EIS:
Without the project, development of in excess of six billion tonnes of coal within these basins is unlikely to be economically viable…
That’s more than six times what will be mined from Wandoan in the next 30 years. So expect at least another five Wandoans (say, 200,000 ha in total) to appear on the radar soon.
Thanks, jo. I’ll have a read when I get time.
Nick, I’m told that the service corridors are a whole problem on their own.
still@downfall, did they ever build that toxic waste dump at Gurulmundi? At the time it was said to be a low rainfall area. It struck me that the very head of the Murray-Darling Basin, very close to the watershed of the great Dividing Range where one raindrop goes south and the next one heads for Rockhampton, and right on the edge of the collection zone of the Great Artesian Basin was a funny place for a toxic waste dump.
Yes Brian, the toxic waste dump was build at Gurulmundi. Yes it was built up on the divide of waters & YES!! the bloody thing filled up on a big rain event & overflowed. Toxic waste?? into the L-Tree creek which flows into the Dogwood Creek, into the Condamine River which becomes eventually the Darling/ Murry.
Again local knowelege was ignored in the siting & construction of the Toxic waste dump. After hauling up waste from Brisbane for a number of years, it was found it was no longer required. Bit by bit the management of the site has slowed downed to a point now ( I may be wrong), stuff all happens there. The authories in charge now, I believe the EPA, are hoping this whole little sorry saga will be forgotten. Out of sight & out of mind. Who in the electrates that matter have heard of Gurulmundi & who would drive 5 hours, from Brisbane, to look at it.
Thanks. Incredible!
From memory, the decision was made in the early 90s by a Labor government. I’m sure the distance from Brisbane (not too far and not too close) plus the fact that it was in a safe NP seat were taken into consideration.
Still @ Downfall. Having lived on the banks of the Woleebee Ck, closer to the head for many years, I can assure you that we have often seen 150 – 200 mm in 24 hrs which causes this creek to rival some rivers. The Woleebee Ck is one creek which flows through Xstrata’s mining area and which will be diverted. I hope the engineers have done their homework well when you see the volumn and force of the water when the creek is in full flood after a heavy deluge as the catchment covers a substantial area.
So you’ll all be voting “No
DamsHoles In The Ground That Will Fill Up With Water And Then Flood ” Green then?Sorry, I shouldn’t be flip, this is a problem of the highest order.
What we have here in qland, is a democracy’s graveyard. We’ve been left with a fossilised sham despotic self-interested regime who are practically unassailable electorally due to the power of encumbency. The education system it put in place over it’s 20 years will guarantee it’s hold ( queensland gets bottom of the class in all tested school years for literacy and numeracy, Orwell was right about how to control a population) because the citizens produced will be compliant, jingoistic and fearful, in aggregate, ie electorally significant, terms: a grade propaganda fodder. Witness 28.7% of rural and regional queensland voted one nation if you don’t believe it.
And that diabolic excuse for a politik existing and providing governence sits on top of the hugest (archaic biological cornucopia, as expected in the land surface longest exposed to tropical photosyntehtic insolation, now dead and geologic) fossil hydrocarbon provence. Add cheap and cheerful, pseudo-clean extractive technologies, and you have a grand magnet for capital. In a year where very few companies shares escaped ravaging, these coal-processing ones went gang-busters: in ASX stocks, last 52 weeks, as of last November, “the top three stocks have in common is their relationship to clean coal or/and coal seam gas assets and technology.” The above mentioned Linc was top of the list. It’s 6000 shareholders ( whose names should be inscribed in stone for future generations to revile) have seen the initial 80million grubstake bubble to 1.6 billion market capitalisation.
The shorter me: it’s the capitalist dream, and planetary nightmare, in play. There’s no effective laissez-faire-capital-civilising governence in place here. Instead we have those robber barons, (and no upper house) the queensland Labor Party. Look at it’s paradigmatic fruits: reprobates like ex-treasurers DeLucky,( Cubbie Station and McCarthur Coal supremo) and McInWraith( he of the $HalfMill success fee for getting Anna and Greg and the current treasurer to give Tezza’s likely lads a 5 Billion contract.)
That’s the real toxic sludge that’s across the land, ensuring the others: LaborMatesInc. Look on their works, ye puny, and despair. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the sun shines out of the Borgia’s fundament, but at least they have a solar feed in tariff policy that could drive investment, and a willingness to see that apply to utility scale installations.
That, IMO, is where the rubber meets the road about turning this sorry fossil-driven energy mess around. Iff and only iff that’s been promoted, then I’m on board. Utility scale sustainable energy production is where the best future lies. Not f’n sham clean coal play acting, hugely profitable for a few thousands now, distastrous for billions and the ages.
Rant endeth.
Danny, can’t keep up with a rant like that, you are out of my league. I’m one of those ignoranist with no learnin. Before the era you are talking about though, back then it was you’re 15 go back to the farm, you don’t need an education. Just shows the educated don’t always get it right.
It’s a problem if you’re located in any safe electorate. One side can’t win & ignores you & the other takes you for granted. In the Sorry, I’ll fix it Pete & Captain Bligh of the Lost Bounty era our lot out in the regions become the favourite whipping boy on the lead up to an election in the hope to haul in a few votes going to the Greens. Take Anna’s tirade just before the election was announced, the reef will be saved & those trees out west will be too. Don’t know enough to comment on the coastal cane country but I can tell you no untouched stands of trees are coming down. Fix it Pete stopped that years ago.
I’m not wanting to get into a political debate but I am about to make the point that there is a difference between the small time punter & the big end of town, in your words LabourMatesInc. For a big operation such as the Wandoan open pit coal mine there is no such thing as tree clearing guidelines. For 10 000 ha any remnant tree clumps will be gone. As long as it looks good in the EIS don’t worry about what the local/ yokel’s claim about inadequacies in creek diversion, levy banks & water impoundments. If it all goes wrong leave it flow down the Fitzroy to the Great Barrier Reef. Just like Ensham Mine last year, with the EPA standing by like eunuchs at a brothel.
still@downfall, sorry I’ve taken a few days to get back to you.
Rather than seeing their EIS as just ‘bullshit’ to baffle you, although no doubt there is a huge amount included – it is actually their Achilles heel. This is when they put down on paper what it is they are applying to do, in detail.
Anyways, I spoke to a bloke in the Dept about the project….a nice chat.
Firstly, the Coordinator-General is open to accepting submissions from the public after the EIS close off date, now passed, acknowledging both the timing of the EIS and the humungous size of the EIS and of the project itself. So you should let people know that there are still opportunities to make detailed submissions if they haven’t already.
There are a few stages of approval to go through. Xstrata (Wandoan Coal blah) for a start haven’t actually chosen their water option, so it can’t be given approval based on their “three preferred options” etc. So there are extra reports into their raw water options due even before the process can even move forward again.
And you ( or whoever is doing the actual leg-work ) should ask for a formal period to review these reports ..there is no harm asking and considering the import of water on the region & nation – these reports have genuine public interest dimensions.
The project also has to be approved, ( after it gains approval under the State Development and Public Works Organisation Act 1971 (Qld)) ….. by the Feds ie. by Garrett under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), an Act which would covers some meta aspects of the project ie. climate change impacts and also micro ie. protected species etc. The Commonwealth. approval process won’t even begin until after the first approval process. So there is also an opportunity now to look at the Federal legislation in respect of the project and also think strategically about the Surat Basin proposed ‘redevelopment’ in terms of the AGW debate/Fed Govt.
It also has to be approved by the Qld Dept of Mines, yet another approval process..and opportunity
I suspect the timeline on the company website is just PR for investors, and now with the GFC – the whole process could spin out over a longer time period…. or Xstrata may even mothball it for the time being…but your community should use this time to get organised.
As I suggested – you should be reaching out for help and esp. making contact with environmental groups and other mining affected communities, but even more importantly making contacts with experts who may be able to provide assistance, if you haven’t done so already.
This dude http://civil.eng.monash.edu.au/about/staff/muddpersonal is a well regarded expert in ‘environmental impact, management and rehabilitation of mine wastes’ etc. You might want to pass on his name/contact. It may be well worth giving him a ring for both suggestions and/or good Qld contacts he knows.
If there are people in your district with a few bob, I’d be buying in some technical expertise in relation to the EIS in terms its modeling of effects on raw water supplies, effects on groundwater, bores, and also the storage of contaminated water and air pollution. Xstrata are not known for their best practice. Begging or buying technical expertise will def. help to bolster the community’s position (and also being able to point to so many recent spillages etc. in terms of storage dams and therefore bad designs and mgt etc.
The likelihood of stopping this project or indeed the entire “re-development” of the Surat Basin is pretty well out of the question imo, speaking very pessimistically. It would take an almighty campaign ….. Franklin River without the iconic wilderness to protect….however the Food Bowl vs. Resource Bowl is definitely an issue that needs to be put before the general public at the very least and within the climate change debate generally.
And in terms of the Surat Basin being “redeveloped” – there is also an opportunity to request an innovative ‘regional assessment’ process rather than this one-by-one assessment process. Exactly how many mines are going to be developed in this region, Minister? – What are the overarching environmental outcomes re: water and the land use mix being planned for the region? Def. questions that should be be thrown at Ministers and Oppositions right now. Wandoan is the catalyst project in the basin.
I’d also have a v. long list of micro/local demands which you might find are very doable.ie. how close to the town are they planning to mine and campaigning to push them them back to what your own experts tell you is an acceptable barrier in respect of effects on the township re: air & noise pollution, visual amenity, traffic infrastructure etc…while also pushing very hard on all the water issues, and also suggesting raw supply alternatives yourselves if the water they want is just the cheapest and easiest for them to take, and also pushing for the most up-to date technologies in terms of all stages – mining, processing, tailing storage, remediation, air pollution.
You might like to pass this info onto the folks who’ve made submissions – they might find it helpful in some way.
Btw. it’s amusing how Qld famers are being all ‘pooh-pooh’ about miners taking so much water and discharging polluted water into waterways and oceans etc…can they keep a straight face when they say it?
And as for tree clearing – put it away still@downfall – Qld graziers/landowners were clearing up to 300-400 thousand hectares per year during those years – it was a total fcuking disgrace – this is a drop in the ocean compared to that.
Thanks Jo, you have taken the time to be helpful & not just entred into this arena just to show how clever you are. I am certainly passing on what you have to say. I’m ignoring the last bit, not that I’m not prepared to take you on but that I wish to stay focused on the task at hand. Some of my comments come out of a sense of frustration of people in the regions not having a voice. This thread is the first time I have ever made any comment in this type of forum. Are there people out there willing to hear a voice out in the wilderness, or is this a sideshow to amuse oneself in self gratifing cute comments?
There is a group called the Wandoan Liasion Committee who are there to give the local community input into the mineral & energy explosion of activity in these parts. It is made up of people pro mine, anti mine & others in between. I’m not on this committee. In reguards to the Wandoan coal operation their number one focus at the momment is a 2 km exclusion zone from the outskirts of Wandoan of mining activity. This is effectivly asking Xstrata not to go ahead with the Frank Ck pit which if operating will have a profound dust,light & noise pollution on the township of Wandoan.
Interesting rant, Danny. Jo that’s extraordinarily helpful.
still@downfall, you do get some cute and amusing comments on fora like this, but in general we wouldn’t blog unless we were serious. I think I can say that on behalf of the LP collective.
Also stats show that there are many more lurkers than commenters and the traffic on LP is quite high for this medium. I think this thread is a good example of “citizens’ journalism” where we’ve all shared and learnt a bit. Someone worked out that for the last federal election we were the second most influential site after the ABC. I don’t know about that, but I reckon that if political strappers are doing their job they should keep an eye on us.
That’s no substitute for direct campaigning, though, which I’m no good at having spent much of my life drafting replies for ministers to keep the hordes at bay.
Jo
We are ‘affected landholders’ of the Wandoan Coal Mine, and I read the ‘text’ section of the EIS and some other parts, and made notes and submissions.
Local knowledge is ignored – but they are not even thinking of such simple basic things as grass fires started from bottles or cig. from the highway and making fire breaks.
The trouble with 100 year events is that they are not every 100 years. They can be 2 weeks apart – as happened a few years back. It must be remembered that this area is close to the tropics and has STORMS.
Thanks for your interest JO – will be back to talk later (after the weekend when Ill not be near a computer)
A passionate thread. Possibly some relevant material. DME (Department of Mines and Energy)has web maps of EPC’s (Exploration Permits- Coal) ATP’s (for gas and oil) and these would give us all pause. There is practically no area which is not covered by one and usually both of these, including the areas which proponents such as Xstrata have had to relinquish.
This then raises apossible issue for me- those who sell out and move are moving to land which they “could reasonably be expected to know” carries a risk of the same thing at some time in the future. This could be a recipe for no compensation next time around.
And if the size of the present MLA (Mining Lease Application) area sounds shocking, a quick look at the rest of the MDL’s (not just Xstrata’s) in the immediate area as well as the remaining EPC’s still held by Xstrata, shows that this is perhaps just an entree. If so, we may all be like passengers commenting on the colour of the table linen in the Titanic’s dining room.
M & B, yes you’re right, every day there is the same statistical chance of the 1/100 event of any sort. Here we had 1983, 1984, 1989 (really huge), 1996- also huge, 1998- record 12 month total. All of these equalled or exceeded our 1/100 year event.
And with apologies to who posted it, I can’t find it right now, yes, you are right, we are being told to expect harsher dry and wet events, and with my specialist area of range management I can tell you that this means that an even greater than usual proportion of the rain will run off because the drier, barer earth will combine with the greater total rainfall per event and more intense rate of fall. Sort of triple whammy.
Surely we have departmental people who have observed how eastern Australia has had about 12 years of the last 25 all in a 1/25 year drought event. Statistics can be valuable when used within their inherent limitations, otherwise, I suspect you have jeard the sayings.
Thanks for coming in off the edges into this thread. Xstrata may be the headline act but the collective activity of all the other mineral & energy companies is massive. This is a rough figure but I believe that there are over 50 companies undertaking exploration work in the Dalby regional council area alone. Personally I’ve had to deal with 6 different mobs, 4 coal exploration, gas exploration down to the deep coal at 600 metres & a proposed gas pipeline.
In #39 Brian made a fleeting reference to service corridors. It is like you laid out a map amongst the table linen of the Titanic; with the Xstrata operation in the maps centre & as the good ship hit the iceberg the spaghetti was flung across the map in all directions. That’s how coherent the planning has been. There are no service corridors as such, each piece of infrastructure entrails itself at will across the countryside.
As mentioned earlier, #12, there was a mining forum held in Wandoan around end Oct. last year & I stated my amazement how neutered the EPA are in the face of these big operations. Also present was a senior representative from the Dept of Planning & Infrastructure. In my naivety I thought as the title suggests that this Dept. plans & out of all this mad rush of activity some sort of planned coordination was underway between common interests. But no, the forum was told, as I understood, that the Dept. only looks at individual applications in isolation after each company plans to go wherever it wishes to.
on the edge, I mentioned the notion of expecting harsher dry and wet events. As the atmosphere warms its dewpoint increases and so can hold more water before precipitation. When something triggers precipitation there is more water up there to come down. As I said it’s not rocket science. With global warming James Hansen reckons the isotherms have effectively moved 4 degrees towards the poles, that’s over 400k, although that wouldn’t be uniform. If the global surface temperature goes up by 1C the increase on land is double that of the sea and the increase at the poles is likely to be more than double that near the equator. Also all the major circulation systems change – surface sea, deep sea, lower atmosphere and upper atmosphere. All interact with each other and there are natural decadal oscillations as well. Some of the changes are quite strong and clearly evident, some are still uncertain as to how they are going to work out.
Climate models I think usually work on a grid of 300 x 300 kms, so they are quite coarse. The result of all this is that there is more certainty with the big picture than there is with the small. It’s like the weather bureau can predict scattered showers for the SEQ basin and mostly they are right. But they’ve got approaching zero chance of predicting whether a shower will come across my suburb.
The net result of this is that the historical records that make up the averages are not worth a pinch of the proverbial as it relates to, say, the Wandoan district, which is just a speck on the map. So there is considerably greater risk and our adaptation strategies to climate change need to take account of that.
A further factor is that people who live in temperate zones have little conception of what we used to call a “cloud burst”. If you go a bit further north, say around Rockhampton, I recall my brother ringing up to find that “Joe X” had 8 inches (200mm) last night while “Bill Y” had 11 inches. These dumps are not uncommon there and are bound to come further south.
If there is still anyone out there running a casual eye over this thread, here is another web site worth checking out. http://www.futurefoodqld.com.au/
As its name suggests this is a lobby group concentrating on the food v’s mining debate, which I believe is worthy of debate in it’s own right. This is future food’s vision statement that is on their home page.
“We see a future where ‘non-urban Queensland’ enjoys the same planning certainty our cities and towns already enjoy.
This plan will protect our food production capacity (iconic farmland) from unnecessary mining while providing certainty to miners over their operations on appropriate mine sites.”
#46 Jo. You are right; the likely hood of stopping the Wandoan project is buckley’s to none. But there is a lot of work to undertaken to make sure that proper planning is done so the mine can exist in the local conditions. This thread has concentrated on cloud burst events increasingly occurring under climate change conditions, (Brian # 54). We all do not want regular occurrences of the Gulf flood mine overflows or the Ensham pump out of last year.There are a few other equally important issues that need to be properly planned for in the proposed Wandoan open cut mine.
What does deserve a Franklin dam type of campaign is the proposed Haystack Rd mining leases. http://www.coal4breakfast.com.au/
Still@downfall, I could agree, but frankly I think the coal4breakfast mob need to think carefully about some of the stuff on their site.
If you go to the online forum page I think this is fine but some of the stuff Von Curtis goes on about will limit widespread support.
I’m busy today, but I’ve got a couple more comments I’ll make later in the weekend.
If it’s alright, I’ll repost a first hand account of, I’m guessing, a farmer from the coalforbreakfast site so people are clear what really happens outside the abstract confines of bound volumes of environmental management reports, guidelines, and undertakings. In these days of professional spin merchants, lobbyists, apologists, and rent seekers, there’s nothing like someone having been in the firing line to give an air of authority
Have farmers got a right of refusal to keep prospectors off their land? On the subject of governments riding roughshod against individuals expressing a wish to not participate in further planetary ruination: Since these new mining procedures produce liquid fuels. (diesel, DiMethyEther) might it not be construed that this law can be brought into play?
If the
IE if push came to shove, and farming communities managed to stand solid to block the way of progress, so threatening the fossilized state budget, could the state enact provisions of THE LIQUID FUEL EMERGENCY ACT 1984, and compel farmers to let the mining companies to have their way?
It must get very tense in the farming communities when a lot, most, try and hold the line, keep the farm going, have the family stay on the land for another generation, and it only takes one landholder to say “show me the money, it’s yours”
Brian, I must admit that this Von Curtis character is on a different planet. I don’t believe he is a Haystack Rd. local, could be from anywhere & has found a site that hasn’t found the time for housekeeping. They do need to throw the clown off.
Danny “Have farmers got a right of refusal to keep prospectors off their land?”
The short answer is no. But the mining companies do have a set of responsibilities to adhere to. One thing that does keep farmers a little empowerment is alluded to in the quote you got off the coal4breakfast site: “ I encourage you to contact the Mining Registrar for the Brisbane Region”. When a mining company operating with an exploration permit on a farmers land has not adhered to their responsibilities such as clearing up the site after they are finished, the farmer is entitled to send a letter of complaint to the mining registrar. Too many letters are not in the mining companies best interest as they can be taking into account when the mining company wishes upgrade the exploration permit to a mining lease.
The link below is a community in northern NSW who have run a blockade to stop mining right at the beginning at the exploration stage.
http://www.ccag.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=97&Itemid=74
With bigger lease areas, such as the proposed Wandoan open cut coal mine, it is too easy to break solidarity of resistance between the landholders. I’m sure you have heard of the average age of farmers getting higher each year & of children finding a more profitable lifestyle elsewhere. If a farming couple are in their 60’s or older with no kids to hand over to, a fistful of cash is very tempting.
As far as the question of open cut against burning it underground; what is the lesser of the 2 evils? With open cut the landscape becomes a moonscape, unproductive perhaps for a century. Underground burning, very much an unknown science & land subsidence issues, but some sort of production can coexist on the surface.
hey still@downfall & others – you’ve got the Borg on board!
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25150723-5018775,00.html
Time to get the QLD Greens on board supporting Borg and pincer Labor. Every concession, every reasonable demand…hell… every ambit claim…now!
“pincer Labor”…. I like the sound of that. So that’s at least three policies where Greens and LNP are better aligned than Labor/Greens: Traveston, 44c/kwhr Solar feedin tariff, and “farms not coal”. LNP minority government, with Greens balance of Power, anyone?
Jo I came across this web page when looking for the Liverpool Plains farmer blockade in NSW . What we believed in the past to be unworkable ideology differences, here is an example of NSW Greens working with graziers & farmers.
http://lee.greens.org.au/index.php/content/view/2680/42/
still@downfall, you had a double posting, so I’ve deleted one. Concerning the Von Curtis character, at one point he said he’d be prepared to shut down the site if the MSM (mainstream media) were doing their job. Because of that I thought he must be one of the prime movers responsible for the site.
jo, thanks for the heads up on the Borg. Interesting!
on the edge @ 52, you said that “greater than usual proportion of the rain will run off because the drier, barer earth will combine with the greater total rainfall per event and more intense rate of fall.”
This struck me as odd in the light of what is said to be the usual experience in the Murray Darling catchment. I’ve heard that a 10% deficit in rainfall can mean a 30% deficit in runoff. We are continually told that in the Wivenhoe Dam catchment the first 50mm of any rain event goes on wetting the catchment. Leave it a week and you start all over again.
I can think of some reasons why it might be different in the central Qld range-lands, but would you care to comment? Perhaps a bit off topic, but I’m curious.
Brian, climate change is not necessarily expected to result in lower annual totals, and where it does it will be some years higher and some lower making a lower average. The 10/30 relationship you refer to can apply while a new equilibrium establishes, but in the context of the faster, heavier but more widely spaced rain events, the model I spoke of will apply.
This will mean that the flow heights from the 1/100 year rain events will actually be higher, even though of shorter duration, and if the falls are greater, and/or more frequent, then washout form tailings pits may become a relatively frequent event.
My “political” comment is that while ever our Australian society is addicted to cheap reliable energy supplies to feed our high standard of living then no government, Greens included I venture to suggest, will take unilateral action to redress the balance of power between energy and food production.
There is always a higher pedestal to stand on when you don’t have to deliver, i.e. majority or minority opposition.
Leaving all other things to one side, I wonder what our global (by then 6 billion) population will be doing when the Wandoan regions energy reserves are exhausted in 50 years time. I can accept exploitation of resources at a measured rate while renewables are being developed asap, hell-for-leather permit issuing by Queensland looks a bit like getting it all underway before global pressure shuts down coal altogether.
And as still@downfall points out, the shelving of mines like Wandoan is by no means the universal desire of the local populations. For many it is something they believ in, for others it is the simplest and best retirement option.
Brian I apologise. I didn’t address all of your question.
The principal under which the runoff increases from drier earth is similar to that of the kitchen sponge. Try quickly wetting a completely dry sponge, and then try slowly trickling water into it until it has dampened, and then finish the wetting process. The results are startlingly different. The soil is no different.
However, there are several extra factors. Continuing the sponge analogy, imagine a completely smooth sponge, and then a very rough one, the difference is the slowing of the movement across the surface while the “wetting up” hapens. The soil is the same.
Another really important factor is the difference in both intake speed and total storage capacity related to the % vegetative ground cover and the total root biomass. The plants % cover both provide the blockages to slow the overland movement while it infiltrates and the entry point to the soil for the water to percolate down.
Then the most important of all, the root biomass, that is what determines the actual storage capacity, the “tank size”, for the rainfall to fill.
Climate change will gradually reduce the % plant ground cover, and then the root volume, and the wettability of the soil, and each of these then compromises each of the others in a vicious circle.
HENCE! the apparently drier conditions leading to greater runoff!
Coal4beakfast does not know who von curtis is and it is correct that it is a lack of housekeeping giving him/her a forum.
The Underground Coal Gasification and Coal Seam Methane industries pose very real threats. UCG leaves very toxic chemicals including phenols uncontrolled in the aquifers to travel the aquifer a whatever snail pace they do for thousands of years. We do not understand the interconnectivity of these aquifers, and even if we did, the EPA on past experience would apply their 15 year rule. If it is OK for 15 years, it is OK forever.
The UCG people believe they can burn out the coal and leave pillars that will support the surface but this has never been done, let alone proven over 50 or 100 years. Subsidence and soil fracture will allow the toxic gases to escape to the surrounding area, and there are significant anecdotal reports from the former USSR of very serious consequences, including many deaths.
CSM has to remove the water in the coal seam to release the methane. This water is salty, and current estimates are that 2,000 tons per day (no misprint, 2,000 tons per day) will be be stored in these “evaporation ponds” (massive dams) at peak production in a few years, with no plan for its disposal. The EPA applies the 15 year rule, they believe the dams will last 15 years so that is forever. The miners have an environmental bond that the EPA cannot disclose, but said it was “more than 26 cents per ton”.
A 1 in 100 year flood will see many/most/all these dams breached and the salt deposited in the headwaters of the Murray Darling. The Queensland government and EPA can then claim the quadrella: they will have damaged severely the Gulf rivers, the Lake Eyre catchment, the Fitzroy Basin, and the Murray Darling.
The former Dalby Town Council set up a small desalination plant and constructed a pond to the same standards and designed by the same engineers (and probably built by the same companies) which leaked salt within a year and had to be shut. But the self monitoring miners can find no salt, and the EPA can find no fault, even though they say it has been a “gamble”. Originally the ponds were required to be clay lined, then plastic lined, and licences issued in future will require the salt to be reinjected. It will be reinjected as brine after evaporation or desalination and we will trust them to put it in the same aquifer. But even this will not start for many years.
At a Mining Forum in Dalby last year, a motion from the floor calling for an independent international environmental audit of the Surat Basin and all the secret EMP’s and EIS’s was unanimously passed, but nothing more has been heard.
Mining is important to our economy, the environment is important to our future, and food is critical to humanity’s survival. With just a modicum of planning we can have the best of everything here and be a model or the world.
Jeff, I went into editing mode to put a “D” onto “alby” and ended up making a few other ‘improvements’ to the spelling. I don’t think I messed anything up but please say so if I did.
This mining thing just gets worse and worse. As a direct share investor since 1991 I decided early on that mining companies only behaved when forced to by governments. OK Tedi was very instructive and an admitted problem, then resolved and ostensibly hunky dory, but is it really? One would have thought that modern democratic governments would make them behave, but do they?
Mining subsidence is a problem in Ipswich, according to them a minor one which they say they have under control. It’s bit late after the fact.
I wonder about the role of local government in these issues. Back @ 53 still@downfall likened service corridors to “spaghetti … flung across the map in all directions.” Surely local government should have some say in this. I’m told that near Wandoan one block of land is transversed by 5 different corridors.
It’s taken me a fair while to find this thread, but I live in the Surat Basin, actually I’m one of the farmers who are affected by the proposed mine at Haystack. I think you’re all just scratching the surface when it comes to the environmental damage that has been allowed to occur here.
The coal seam methane extraction is huge out here at the moment. This is the process whereby water is removed from the underground coal seam which releases methane from the seam that is then collected at the surface and pumped to the end user or put in a power station. This sounds wonderful but the water in the coal seam is extremely salty and there are currently tens of thousands of acres of ponds, with 7 metre high walls full of salt water where the water is just evaporating, leaving of course salt. They started off just putting this water in earth ponds, then they began lining the ponds with clay and now they’re being lined with plastic, but these ponds are here forever! Does anyone seriously believe these lining measures are going to last forever! Obviously when the salt gets out it will devestate farmland, underground water tables and the headwaters of the Murray Darling Basin. I do have to hand it to the government though, they’ve made the rule that these ponds don’t leak for 15 years!!!! As a bond for cleanup should something happen the government also charges these companies something of the order of 50 cents/tonne of salt in the ponds!!! Of course the companies will be long gone when it comes time to clean up the mess they’ve made.
After pressure at the summits held across Queensland, the government has legislated that all new permits granted for coal seam mathane requires the company to treat the brackish water so that fresh water can be extracted from it and used elsewhere. This is wonderful, except that the water is too expensive for any end users to take and the brine that comes out of the reverse osmosis plant still has to be stored in ponds. It’s also been mandated that they inject this brine back down the wells when they’re finished, but this won’t be for decades! In any case this is only a stipulation on new permits granted (from just a couple of months ago), in the meantime we still have some 5-10 years of current permits to chew through where the ponds are there forever. It has been estimated that when these permits are up and running, 1000 tonnes of salt will be brought to the surface every day, and this will go on for the life of the process – being tens of years.
I haven’t commented on the Haystack thing yet but can do later. It’s like the wild west out here at the moment where the resource companies are ripping the guts out of the land, destroying the environment and making a killing from it (while paying massive royalties to the government) before the voters of the city wake up to whats going on and demand a stop to it.
• The hypocrisy displayed by Government and EPA destroys all faith in their management. We go from one disaster to another and no conception that it will happen again and again while they believe their own spiel.
• The massive amounts of salt produced with CSM extraction should ring alarms bells with even the greatest dullard. The mining across Queensland has had disastrous consequences in the last couple of wet seasons and there will be another in the Surat Basin/Murray Darling catchment when next we have a flood.
• There is much talk of returning the salt underground but in the meantime the evaporation methods in use at present are OK to continue which only consolidates the disaster waiting to happen. They have no idea how successful the reinjection method will be or what it will do to our very precious underground water.
• I was told that the salt component was 2000 tonnes a day and I find it inconceivable that we can find a use for such massive amounts long term or why we even require such a blow out with these underground resources. I believe Australia is being milked because the resources are cheap and not because the world has a need for them and it will be to our detriment eventually.
• At the same time there is absolutely no planning about where to mine and indeed no conception of the differences between soils and what soil type can actually grow food. There is great debate about emissions but we don’t see the need to stop unnecessary emissions, only to penalise one industry in order to allow the other to do as it likes. Our priorities are all wrong when we destroy places like the Haystack Plain for a commodity that is more than likely going overseas for at the end of the day survival is about having food in our stomachs.
Amby, there is no limit to how long a comments thread can go unless we decide to close it off, which is rare. For a little light relief our longest runs to 595 comments, started in June 2005 and the last comment was in October 2008. Not the most serious topic, but it might yet make 600!
Your input as one affected by the mining is especially welcome.
Jo @ 59 linked to this story which says that Springborg is going to stop mining chewing up food-producing land singling out Haystack and Felton. As one directly affected, I’m wondering whether you believe him. Politicians once they get in often find that legally it is not so easy to pull out. Also such a move would affect business confidence to
rape and pillageinvest in our future.He may have some options where Tarong is involved, but Wandoan would be another matter. Also I find it hard to believe that he would do anything to upset the coal seam methane miners. There is too much state revenue to lose.
Brian, thanks for the editing. I now have a keyboard tht doesn’t miss half the letters I type!
The wild west analagy is quite valid: shoot the natives and grab what you can before society realises and demands decent conduct.
The goverment seems to regard currnt value as the only predeterminant for land use, with no intention to try to plan for any future value, envirnmental, economic or social.
Warra (near Haystack)was the centre of a coal mining boom in 1915, and the town boomed with 5 hotels and all that went with it. But then the miners left, and the farmers carried the community throught drought and flood, depressions and recessions, and booms.
The NFF has released figures that show agriculture has taken on 14,000 new employees since the mining crash 5 months ago! What value is that to a country when Queensland miners have sacked 10,000 at the first hint of downturn?
Our government likes to use the market for policy decisions for everything, but the market is not a social policy instrument. If ever we needed proof of this, witness the issues of Wall St in the last 6 months.
The government is abrogating is social policy responsibilities by allowing the market to determine the best use land that has value for hundreds or thousands of years. Indeed, to determine that we will not protect our foodbowls is to determine that we expect mankind to become extinct. It is indeed ironic that the most likely issue to cause our extinction is the use of coal.
The EPA (Extraordinary Permits Agency) really is a farce, and history will be unkind to all those on whose watch these unbelievable decisions have been made. The only consoling factor is that they will mostly live long enough to be condemned and shamed, and that that by itself may make others more vigilant.
Back again. Do I believe Springborg on this? Well I don’t know although he has made the pledge. I would say however that it is a somewhat mainstream opinion he has with the greens formally saying the same thing as well as independents out here. Federal independent Tony Windsor also came out here last week to give his support. I appreciate it is very easy to give assurances when you have no realistic chance of power outright as in the greens and independents case but at least it’s better than the ALP who seem beholden to the QRC. It just seems an incredible situation where the government can seemingly invent a mineral development licence to give to itself to sell off to the highest bidder without regard to the good of future generations of all Australians. So yes I think in our case he has a chance (although Tarong has publically stated the MDL would have been sold if not for the Financial crisis), but in Wandoans case, well I don’t think they’ve made any promises there and may not be able to.
When it comes to upsetting the coal seam methane miners I think elected officials are there to make hard decisions for the long term future of all Queenslanders. It is absolutely no good destroying sustainable, productive land that will be eternally needed forever for the sake of what is essentially a finite resource that is known to be the cause of climate change and will soon have to be superceded by renewables to avert the coming disaster anyway. It seems like an argument between yesterdays fuel and tomorrows food. For example the coal under Haystack is export grade coal that will most likely never be used in Australia. It will be exported and at current usage levels will keep the worlds power generators going for just some 30 days. We’re thinking of trading in some of our best food producing soil forever to prolong the inevitable end of coal fired power generation for just 30 days!!!
Gotta go, could rabble on all day, but people need to see it to believe it and let elected officials know about about it before it’s too late.
Thanks Jeff and Ampya. It looks as though we will indeed have the opportunity of seeing what the Borg will do on this issue after the election.
This thread has possibly run its course and I’m aware the readers and commenters have found their way here who don’t usually visit our little blog. I’ve got a new post up os soil carbon which may interest. We do post regularly on climate change and I’m hoping to put some stuff up on the worry about coal, the future of food etc.
Recently we’ve looked at the Traveston Dam and the Murray Darling high court challenge. Of course we’ve done the global financial crisis multiple times.
So stick around if you find it is time well spent. Our aim is to be inclusive with all civil contributions welcome.
It is now 6 weeks since this thread started on contaminated mine waste being washed into the environment due to the floods in NW Queensland. If anything has been done to rectify this situation it has been poorly communicated & not apparent to the locals
Heard this on ABC radio last Thursday. ABC rural programs occasionally run with an update & the Mt Isa and Townsville rags show interest. Are there any reports getting through to media outlets in the big smoke? Call me cynical but if this issue has slipped over the horizon of the short attention span of the media in SE Qld, I doubt weather the Government will be motivated to do much about it. The mining companies will continue to do anything the government allows them to get away with.
My interest is what better standards will be put into place for the many proposed mines in the Surat basin, just west of the Great Dividing Range in southern Qld. Agforce has taken up the issue of the situation in NW Qld & future mine developments across the state with the Qld Government according to this report in the QCL
still@downfall has drawn my attention to an article from The North West Star via Brisbane Times about pollution of streams in North West Queensland. The photo at the head of the article is what Verdun Spreadborogh found when he returned to his property near Mt Isa after being cut off for two months.
The blue is of course caused by copper contamination, but there could also be other heavy metals present.
He said there were also people living downstream.
I’ve included this information and the image in an update at the end of the post.
Very interested to find this site. My family farm immediately to the south of Peabody Wilkie Creek open cut mine about 30kms west of Dalby. It is moving steadily towards us and they have been in to do some core testing for mineralisation.
This project is similar to Ensham in that the pit is levee protected from a periodic flood event on Wilkie Creek.
What I am trying to establish is whether any formal govt. review/enquiry has been started in relation to the pit flooding at Ensham. Because the failure throws into question the assumptions on which the EIS for each of these projects are formed.
The modelling must surely need to be revisited.
And the EPA seem hopelessly conflicted in their role, reviewing their own failures.
This is the broad base on which I will try to delay or modify the project that threatens the creek and our mixed farming property. It is not as though there is not 100′s of hectares that they can expand into away from the flood prone area.
I guess I am looking some advice or leads in mounting a defence. Thanks
Scott
Are the concerns you have are within the existing mining lease of the Wilke coal mine or is the mine looking to expand it’s operation and apply for a further lease area? I’m no expert but I would believe that there would be a different approach needed to either event.
The following two links most likely will not offer you anything new. However to any lurkers out there the second link is worth a read. If you click here it will take you to contacts listed on the AgForce web site. Scott, the co-chairman of futurefoodqld must live very close to you going by this transcript of a speech given at the Rural press club in Brisbane earlier this year.
Scott, I can’t help, sorry, and so far no-one else who can has happened along.
Sorry to hear about yet more farming land being eaten by this monster.
Scott: Yes a report was commissioned in reponse to ensham flooding, and contamination of Fitzroy catchment.
Details can be found at
this EPA page
I saw some posters in the (brisbane) street the other day “no mining on the Darling Downs… its our food bowl”.
Get on to David Gibson, the ex-shadow environment minister, but on record here at LP as being against mining on farmland.
As a word of explanation, still@downfall’s comment @ 76 was doing time in the spam bin (not moderation) when I commented @ 77. Why it lobbed in there is a mystery.
Thanks all for the responses.
Still@downfall- my understanding is that our property falls under their Mineral Development license but they have to redo the EIS. I am still unclear on this.
It is conceivable(but unlikely) that they will on assessing core samples decide to go no further south along creek and push west into the bulk of their lease.
I have spoken to Geoff Hewitt, but the approach there is a little different in my view . They are on the black soil plains. We are in more mixed farming country, a mix of grazing and cultivation.
Future Food’s approach is to label their properties as in iconic farming country and therefore untouchable which is perfectly reasonable. However where we are would I feel be regarded as acceptable ‘collateral damage’, because there is already an open cut mine in operation in the vicinity. The horse has well and truly bolted.
The unfortunate reality is that good coal lies under good country.
Danny- I can’t get to that link. I will try to search within the the site.I’ll chase up David Gibson. Thanks
I have been talking to the Murray Darling Basin Authority but they are still working out where to put the desks. That isn’t really fair but they aren’t putting out a plan until 2011 and it is a gargantuan task if it is to be truly effective.
They will have primacy over the states in terms of legislation along river systems.
I said to a contact there that ultimately they will own the EPA failures so why not have good hard look at the assumptions underpinning guidelines for greenlighting mining along flood prone water courses.
We are in the headwaters of the Murray Darling. The water and the quality can only go downhill from here!
Scott, for what it’s worth, heres the epa link again:
http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/environmental_management/water/fitzroy_river_water_quality/
With David Gibson, it must be remembered that it was a coal magnate that bankrolled the National Party’s election tilt, and Gibson has been mentioned as “future leader” material, so if he fancies hinmself thus, the chance of him going into battle against the forces of fossil foolishness now is very chancey indeed. His greenness in the last parliament may have just been duty of electoral advantage and convenience per his then portfolio, but when he talks about his new role as shadow for infrastructure, at least he focuses on sustainability rather than being outright gung-ho, so he might actually be fair dinkum. He’s also smart and canny enough to be running a google auto-alert for web-mentions of his moniker, as I’d expect of all pollies, so he could be expecting a call from you already after reading this.
When I say he’s on record as being against mining on farmland, if you need to quote him to himself it’s ‘My personal view is that we should protect good productive agricultural land from being lost to either coal mines or irrational dams” Comment 235
But lets face it, the scenario being cooked up by the likes of Linc and Ambre on the darling downs and beyond is a fiendish and devastatingly simple process in aggregate terms: diesel in (the caterpillars etc) and diesel, or some other vehicular fuel, out, absolutely humungous amounts of it, have a look at how much of queensland is on top of coal deposits. This process is likely to make even shit coal economic, it’s at least as attractive as the apple was to eve. Think replacing oil, that’s what this ‘coal to liquids’ thing is all about, preserving our god given right to the pursuit of ever more brakehorsepower, and being on the producer side of the fuel economy. A Qld labor party government is gonna take notice of a few hayseed farmers in electorates that wouldn’t return a labor member in a pink fit, and interrupt access to the very magicest of puddings for treasury royalties? Yeh right, as if.
Scott, if the EIS has to be revisited there is a slight glimmer of hope. At least there is a process that has to accept any submission you may prepare. Otherwise on your own you will be pushing s**t uphill. There will continue to be s**t (mine waste) flowing downstream from mine sites unless the EIS for current mines are reviewed & the requirements for new mines strengthened.
Danny, I’m afraid you are right and Scott the fact is, that on your own you have buckleys. Either everyone in your area comes on board & does the same as the Liverpool Plain farmers (link is up at comment 58) or many individuals & organizations across regional Queensland undertake the long & slow process of building awareness within the coastal electorates. It is my belief that even though futurefood & coal4 breakfast doesn’t fit the exact needs of you or me we still need to support them. One big reason is that they have made a small start to capture the imagination of some in the urban areas.
Danny #78 relates of sighting a poster. I have been told (second hand information) that there is some protest signage in Brisbane especially near the botanical gardens. Can anyone confirm this? What awareness is there of this issue?
Danny, yeah, I don’t have any illusions about political will. Nothing in it for them. I have met with Tim Duddy who is very switched on. The Liverpool plains mob are an excellent template for action. More strength to their arms.
Still@downfall – you are dead right about the need for garnering action on this within the urban areas, and don’t get me wrong , I think it is good what futurefood and coal4 breakfast are doing. They are having a go.
The EPA has acknowledged a series of questions I have put to them that I touched on in #80. We’ll see what comes of that.
Just stumbled on this conversation. I live at Felton, targeted by Ambre Energy’s plans for a v big open-cut mine and coal-to-fuel&CO2 plant. The Felton”Clean Coal Project” What a laugh! 3t CO2 for every 1t fuel produced in the petrochemical plant alone. The whole show would produce over 16 million tonnes of CO2 per year (where will they put that?), and consume more than 16,000 Megalitres of water/year – more than double the water consumed by the whole of Toowoomba, where BTW the dams are under 10% capacity, and the local council are buying ads in the local press to plead with people to use less so we don’t run out before the big pipe from Wivenhoe makes it up the hill. So where will the hombres from Ambre get the water for their little operation? Underground aquifers for starters, but once they’ve drained those and dried up all the shallow bores that supply hundreds of locals with water for house & livestock, the only alternative is to pipe in toxic salty waste water from the coal seam gas fields further west around Dalby. as if all this wasn’t bad enough, the site earmarked for this show is right next to Hodgson Creek, major tributary of the Condamine River in the headwaters of the Murray-Darling. However, there has been a recent development in all this which may just turn the tide. Local lobby group, Friends of Felton has gone public with info that many of us old timers have known about for a long time. Due to the fact that land around Felton was freehold so long ago (the magic date seems to be 1910), it looks like royalties from coal mining would not go to the state govt, but would instead go to landholders, or former landholders who have retained the rights when selling land in the past (and there are quite a few of these). More info at http://www.friendsoffelton.blogspot.com
To gain a further insight of landholder experiences with mining companies check out this transcript entitled scarred landscape from the ABC Stateline program. Amongst those participating in this round table discussion is one George Houen of Landholder Services based in Toowoomba. He is a consultant who specializes in negotiating with mining companies on behalf of landholders. No doubt there are those who have had a negative encounter, but I have been told first hand that this is the man to have on your side to gain what little advantage in the very uneven government legislation playing field between mining companies & farmers.
Scott, if it is professional consultant or legal advice you need, this is most likely a situation where the local solicitor the family has used for generations will have inadequate knowledge. Also it will be a case of paying a ridiculous amount in fees. There is also a law firm in Rockhampton gaining reputation acting on behalf of farmers/ graziers against mining companies. Denise, have the friends of Felton found anyone that has been very helpful in progressing your cause or is there no magic bullet, just a hard slog?
On the question of coal seam water I learnt yesterday that there is a discussion paper out. The department has been advertising it’s existence in a barely audible whisper. Also as the norm these days the time frame to get in a submission is ridiculously short, you have until June 1st.
We have taken on a laywer who used to work for the mining industry in these negotiations, and was involved in a protracted slog for a few years on behalf of neighbours so knows the enemy, so to speak. But thanks for telling me about George Houen, still@downfall. I’ll have a look.
It is still early days and we don’t as yet have much to react to, that is, no specific proposal from the mine operators…just trying to get ourselves organised!
Still, and others in front line: This “playing field between mining companies & farmers”, what is the contest being played that you need the hotshot lawyers and consultants for? Is it a matter of getting the best, or even a fair, deal for the farmers when they sell out to mining interests, or a battle to not sell out at all, to stay on as farmers and graziers, on the basis of these mines being exactly what the planet doesn’t need, for reasons like in denise’s post @ 84?
Considering that if push came to shove, these companies will likely offer squillions and someone will figure “the kids don’t want to keep the property on, we’ve been doing it hard for so long, it’s all going to hell in handbasket anyway, we might as well sell up” especially as you say if they, not the gov’t, are first in line for the Beverly Hillbillies royalties treatment. It would be historic, a few dirt jockeys holding out against big coal, and future generations would no doubt thank you for holding the line, but that sounds more like a Disney movie script.
If someone would pay you farmers for stopping the release of the scads of CO2 by stopping the mines, like they’re talking about paying new guineans for not chopping down their forests, that’d be good. We need a grandchild levy, money we are prepared to kick in so our grandchildren get a fair shake of the planetary stick.
still@downfall – there aren’t too many magic bullets as far as I know, but the royalties issue seems promising. The govt’s up to its neck in debt, I don’t know where it all went, I thought we’d been having a resources boom. Anyway, there’s 3 billion or so coming in this year from coal royalties and they need more. It’s pretty obvious that what’s planned for Felton would have seriously bad consequences all round. If the govt wasn’t going to get any loot, why would Stephen Robertson approve it? I think there’s something called a public interest test – it has to be ‘in the public interest’ to get the go-ahead. An environmental disaster with no pay-off to govt? How can that be in the public interest?
Friends of the earth, brisbane, have started a campaign activity, recognising the facts of life in Queensland:
“broad-based community action is necessary to exert the political pressure needed to break the bond between the coal industry and the State Government”
Their web site has great little heart-starters like:
“Current expansion plans for Queensland coal exports will emit an additional 460 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere per year – equivalent to the annual emissions of 65 average coal-fired power stations”
I reckon a coalition of FOE-ish types, ranging from their inner-city greenish electorate( like fremeantle apparently ) latte pot-plant hugger types to full-on ferals, joining campaign forces with real salt-of-the-earth farmers and cockies, for whom LandCare has been a working model of responsible conservation values, would scare the government sh-less if they thought it could be the thin end of the wedge of a green/tory coalition forming.
If the tories take note of the Fremantle result, ie what can happen when tories run dead in seats where the green vote is so big that the tories have no chance of getting in themselves, and instead get behind the green candidate, then seats that labor gets in on green preferences, like the premier’s, and the treasurer’s, and beattie’s old seat, start to look like interesting battle grounds, especially if the Nats moneybags backers kick in.
There’s no doubt that there should be a lot of common ground between farmers & greenies. Coal mining is destroying our farmland, draining underground aquifers,and poisoning rivers. Burning coal speeds up global warming, which gives us more droughts. It’s a viscious cycle. However, the large majority of farmers think global warming is a lot of bulldust. They also blame the Greens for helping put Labor back in power. Things have really hit the fan with the ban on the clearing of ‘endangered regrowth’. Agforce has gone in hard on this, much much harder than it has on the question of mining v farming which is strange. Anyway, they haven’t worked out yet that the regrowth ban has less to do with endangered trees than locking up carbon. The Govt will take the carbon credits to offset some of the emissions from the coal industry, and the farmers won’t get any compensation.
Danny #87, employing hotshot lawyers & consultants has not been the common practice in the past. The mining boom over the last few years came like a tsunami. Farmers & graziers who don’t have the fine print of the mining act at their fingertips were feeling overwhelmed so hotshots were brought in to organized information days. Here is an example from up at the Galilee basin, the next El Dorado after the Surat basin, go to page 4. (5.94 mb)
In the last few years farmers & graziers have learnt that mining companies don’t do business as it is expected in these parts: a person is as good as their word, a handshake was a deal done, a person is presumed to be honest unless proved otherwise. The world of straight & honest business arrangements was gone, verbal agreements were quickly broken. Strategies employed by mining companies that were downright devious. One of the first tactics used was divide & conquer, we will only talk to individual landholders, if a group of you get together we will not negotiate & will give you a lower price when buying you out. Of course the mining companies cannot demand these terms & now days when a new mining venture is proposed the landholders affected have at times banded together hired a hotshot lawyer or consultant, sharing the cost as a group. Refusing to meet the company individually, demanding minutes be taken at meetings and any proposal by the mining company be written & signed on a company letterhead.
Don’t take it for granted that squillions are always on offer by the mining companies in the purchase of land. In the Wandoan situation the money offered has been very inconsistent. Some have done very well indeed, got themselves a retirement nest or moved onto bigger farms elsewhere & others barely got more than market value. But even with a mine development as inevitable as the coal bonanza at Wandoan there are still half of the landholders still sitting tight. Not all farmers & graziers will take any amount of sqillions offered. For myself I don’t have a ethos of ownership of the land rather one of stewardship.
Danny, The Beverley Hillbillies option is no option at all.
The number of farmers who are holding freehold pre 1910 would be bugger all.
I believe the current legislation suggests compensation at land value plus 10% as a starting point for negotiation. A bit of a low ball offer, I’d say.
Progressive rehabilitation is a nice idea that no mining company really wants to own despite the wishes of a landowner to retain their property. They want to buy every time.
The issues of trying to remediate good cultivation country relating to cost, time, erosion control and ongoing liabilty make it much easier to do a deal, dig a hole, fill it up and plant some gum trees and grass.
That is where rehabilitation is at.
So we get back to where I started , a negotiation for the sale of all or a portion of your home and your livelihood that you can’t say no to… with the prospect of the neighbour from hell into the future.
You don’t want a legal representative a la ” The Castle” talking about “the vibe”!
I hope the mine will find the core samples to be unviable. If that isn’t the case, there will come a time to pick as effective a stick as possible and start beating them over the head.
The EPA and government generally provides the framework ( hell, the vibe!!) for the mining industry. You cannot blame the mining industry for that. Some serious money needs to be chucked at the science, Hello Feds, Hello NFF hello Agforce
Otherwise we just end up with another “Transitional Environmental Program”, a stunningly Orwellian phrase that leapt out me when reading through the review of the Ensham Mine flooding. Thanks for pointing me to that, Danny . It was not pretty reading.
I just can’t get my head around the 1 in 500 year assumptions on the flooding that are contained in that report.
Further to what still@downfall said @ 91, here’s a map of the Galilee basin and all the other Queensland basins.
Danny, I had a look at the Friends of the Earth Cooperative site you linked to and it’s certainly interesting. But I wonder whether they are too easily dismissed as a bunch of greenies. From my limited contacts greenies don’t generate a lot of confidence with people on the land, sorry.
What we really need is an organisation like the Council of Canadians. They don’t advertise their constituent membership much, but I understand it numbers about 100,000 of unlikely bedfellows. About 10 years ago when I first learned of them they did let it hang out a bit and they had farmers, trade unionists, green groups and some corporates all in the same outfit. The focus early was on economic sovereignty, especially the looming NAFTA free trade agreement. Maude Barlowe, their fearless leader, certainly gets around the world and has a say.
But I’m dreaming I guess, and when all is said and done I’m not sure how many wins they’ve had along the way. I’m too old, but if you’d like to have a go…
First up, still and frontliners, don’t mistake me using references to beverley hillbillies as having a go or anything, I appreciate that stewardship thing immensely. The forces working against it, the temptation to take the money and run, especially when conditions for ‘primary production’ aren’t all that flash, what with ‘it’s the driest year since 1948′, are so strong it’ll divide families, not just communities.
Re: “greenies don’t generate a lot of confidence with people on the land”..the feeling will be mutual, and so it goes, on and on, allowing the robber barons of the mining industries to step into the breach, so where there were communities and a way of life, you get dormitories for fly in fly out laborforces, just after cashflow to finance their multiple macmansion investment opportunities back in the city…. ooops, rant detection alarm.
Suffice to say, that tension makes the achievement of the late Rick Farley, as head of the National Framers Federation, working with the ACF’s Phillip Toyne, in managing to talk that dilettante “Both Hands Bob” Hawke into the initial funding of the LandCare movement, all the more remarkable.
Who’s around now that could piss in Rudd’s pocket to such effect, get him to wake up to himself? It’d have to be 110% celebrity to get him really onside, he’s so full of plausible rhetoric he wouldn’t recognise an historic truth if it was dancing in his lap. He’s got the moleskin/ RM’s fetish thing happening, so someone that had ‘more cattle than hat’ / ‘out in the west, where men are men, and cattle are nervous’ macho credibility might swing it…
I know: Jack Thompson… “Kev, mate, this carbon thing… it’s time you pulled your finger out …I’m thinking of a campaign: “2020 Too Far Away”… you in, or what?”
Mining and population don’t mix
Mineral exploration in this country has typically been one-dimensional – if the geological survey reports the existence of a viable deposit then the company proceeds as if it has a natural right to enter the development phase. No particular consideration is given to how the people already living on or near the deposit will regard the sudden appearance of a dirty big mine.
This is wrong and must be fixed. It has been mooted that some land classes should be ruled off limits. But this immediately raises the question: ‘which land classes’ those that are flat and black or those that contain high ecological or amenity values, etc, etc. A more sophisticated approach is needed. To start with, any mineral exploration phase should be multi-dimensional. As well as surveying and defining the ore body the team should check out the attitudes and aspirations of the locals. It must be established whether they actually want a mine in their backyard or whether they’d prefer it was somewhere else. An open transparent process from day-one would save everyone a lot of time, angst and money.
The simple fact of the matter is that heavily populated areas are not suitable for large scale mining regardless of what is sitting on the land surface or underneath it. Mining in heavily populated areas creates too many neighbours; people, households and whole communities who will suffer the externalities that go with large scale mining. A lot of people close to a lot of mining equals a lot of suffering. The corollary is that large scale mining should be confined to lightly settled places where it is possible for the miner to properly compensate the handful of people likely to be seriously affected.
Land use planning that recognises the rights of rural landholders will come to Queensland – hopefully soon. The only way to get the planning processes ‘right’ is to involve the people directly affected. Communities are complex, dynamic organisms – they change and evolve and have different aspirations. To get the balance right it is essential to make plans out in the open where everyone can contribute and take responsibility for the final outcomes.
Danny, as I wrote I was thinking about the ACF’s earlier effort without remembering the details. Rick Farley was certainly a quite exceptional person. But if you think of Don Henry and Ian Lowe, they are just not going to get anywhere much building bridges with the bush.
Henry, I think you’ll find started with the Moreton Island Protection Society out of The Gap, the suburb next door to me. We went via the World Bank to the ACF, and lovely fellow though he is, he’s perhaps more in tune with the big end of town.
The concept of stewardship is interesting and important, I think, and perhaps on the way to the Aboriginal oft-stated notion that they are owned by the land, not the other way around. I’m interested in the idea that if we lose contact with the land and the earth we lose our humanity, but that’s not a concept that I would expect to get much traction in a ‘civilised’ post-modern world, where in large measure we are seen as authors of our own environment.
sorry to be a latecomer to this thread.
Jo’s advice earlier to people affected by these proposed developments is excellent.
I just also wanted to throw in, in terms of getting legal advice and finding experts willing to assist, the Environmental Defenders Office Network are an excellent community resource.
Speaking from experience of community campaigns in Tasmania, it’s also really important that the multiple communities and groups affected by these developments etc. form a coherent alliance if at all possible.
In terms of getting assistance from green groups etc., my advice, as a green who has worked with rural people for a great deal of my life is: both sides need to focus on the common ground for the particular issue, not get caught up in the areas where there is division. So the farmers and greens don’t agree on land clearance. They do on invasive mining practices and loss of agriculural land. That’s the common ground, so stand on it together and fight for it.
best of luck.
Just to make things easier, I think jo’s contribution was mainly back @ 46 and then again @ 59.
There was also 11, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 31, and 35. Might have missed some. Quite a contribution!
thanks for that Brian – unfortunately when I’m at work I’m confined to IE, and it doesn’t show up post numbers at LP – if there’s a way to fix that, it would be fab!
Thanks myriad.
Here in Queensland there appears to be a huge gulf between rural landholders & urban green groups. A deep suspicion is held by rural people towards “greenies”. This situation has been made far worst in the last decade by politicians seeking short-term gain to earn a green veneer by exaggerating inaccurate perceptions & thereby enhancing the drift between city & country. This has been taken like a kick in the guts by many in the regions & has hardened the mindset of many. If I were to suggest to some of my neighbours to meet with a green group the response would be to shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.
Yet myriad I believe you are right, by talking together there will be more common ground than first thought. How do you facilitate the initial meeting between the two groups? Could you flesh out your experience in the two groups campaigning together.
Gavagai #96, ‘Land use planning that recognises the rights of rural landholders will come to Queensland’. I hope you’re right,and I hope you’re in a position of influence because you talk a lot of common sense. I hope it happens soon because we’re in the middle of a crisis out here. In the words of Joni Mitchell “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone”. I hope we’re not all singing that about the Darling Downs in 10 years time. “They stuffed Felton Valley and put up a petro plant”
As an observation you’d need to avoid the topic of tree clearing. Or on second thoughts you’d have to sort that one first before any civil discourse would be possible.
And wild rivers, plus a few other topics.
A few years ago when I was out visiting the district where I grew up I was assured by the local shire chairman that Aila Keto had an office next to Peter Beattie’s office (at least figuratively) and signed off on anything that might have anything to do with the environment. Probably not far from the mark. Labor was chasing the green vote.
There was a famous incident in 2003 in Gatton Agricultural College (or whatever the official title was) where the University of Queensland gave her an honorary doctorate. In her response she told the assembled audience that they would have to get off the land and return it to “nature” – roughly speaking. There was a rural politician in the audience who was attending the graduation of his offspring. I’m told that the only reason he didn’t walk out was because his wife had him leg-roped to the chair. If he’d walked probably most of the audience would have followed.
As a rainforest specialist she of course knew everything about dry-land farming and ecology.
When one of the senior staff suggested to the university authorities that the college could do without PR disasters with its clientele there was much mumbling about it’s good to have controversial views expressed.
There’s more, but that will give you some idea.
still@downfall, it’s one of those things for which there is no magic bullet, and time is alas – in my experience – one of the key ingredients.
FWIW, here’s some of my thoughts on what worked:
– I was one of the ‘greenies’ approaching landowners. In doing so, it was fundamentally important that ideology and preconceived notions of what farmers are like was put aside.
– honesty is critical. When I met with landowner groups I would admit upfront that greens / conservationists and farmers have often not seen eye to eye, but there was common ground between us, and benefit in working together on it. I held out the hope too that if we could work on what we had in common, it could help us overcome other differences.
– acknowledging the good is important – this is where putting away the ideology is critical. Landowners aren’t actually all greedy capitalist / colonialist squatter pigs. Conservationists aren’t actually all hippy/feral/tree hugging/ latte sipping etc etc. Acnowledging that ‘your side’ has got it wrong doesn’t hurt as part of offering an olive branch.
– writing first worked well for me. I would write to a local level landowner group, eg landcare, and introduce myself, be explicit & honest about what I was seeking, and put an offer on the table. I’d then leave it a week or so and follow up with a phone call. This also allowed targetting of landowners / groups who were less rabidly opposed to conservationists.
– pick the right spokesperson / negotiator. It’s no good being represented by a passionate advocate who can’t conceicve that farmers have legitimate points of view in areas of divergence. IE it’s got to be someone(s) who can be sincere in building bridges and genuinely relate.
It’s really hard to give advice about something so often location/demographic -specific, but I hope this gives you some ideas.
Gavagai @ #96 raises some of the most interesting contradictions in this entire debate. “…whether they actually want a mine in their backyard or whether they’d prefer it was somewhere else.” Nowhere will there be a whole community which “wants” a mine in their backyard, so that consensus is not possible. We are therefore back to the age-old process of an activity being automatically okay as long as it only devastates a small number of people (read “electoral/PR risk”).
Which leads directly to the other contradiction- “…where it is possible for the miner to properly compensate the handful of people likely to be seriously affected.” Proper compensation is proper compensation, and is related to size of population only in terms of total dollar cost. It is no more nor less “morally correct” to “properly” compensate a small number of people than a large one, just less profitable for the development proponent, thus getting back wholly to the almighty dollar, which is where this all started anyway!!
An undercurrent I believe I have identified in the majority of the posts on this subject is that the problem we have is less political, since that is totally focussed on the social/financial whim of the moment, and much more on the source of the whim, namely society and our attitudes towards an easy life with abundant cheap energy. These attitudes will be near impossible to change until the majority actually have the personal experience of the ecological, amenity and human cost of “their” energy supplies, which will happen only when thay have a mine in Brookfield, or West End, or in the middle of the Botanic Gardens.
Contradiction after contradiction!
I am one of the volunteers working on the coal campaign at Friends of the Earth that Danny (comment #89) refers to – many thanks for bringing it people’s attention. This is a campaign that is specifically focused on building a broad base of community support to wean Queensland from its (political and economic) coal dependence.
The campaign is called Six Degrees, for a number of reasons, but not least of all because of the currently predicted climate scenarios and the need for unprecendented levels of collaboration to reverse this trajectory.
I have very much enjoyed reading this discussion, and would like to share some of the work that we have been doing in relation to working with landholders and communities across Queensland impacted by the expansion of the coal industry.
In November last year, Six Degrees undertook a listening tour across the coal regions of Queensland – travelling to areas with both an embedded industry (including Gladstone, Blackwater, Emerald) and those agricultural areas which are subject to current coal mining proposals (including Alpha, Wandoan and Chinchilla). We conducted interviews with more than 150 people in those regions. What was essential to this tour was the fact that it was a genuine listening tour – the questions were open-ended and the process intended to help us get a better understanding the issues faced by those communities. The recently released report from this tour is available from our website.
The second key initiative in our campaign was the formation of a fledgling alliance during the state election in March. The alliance of 24 organisations, including landholder associations, conservation, environmental and social justice groups, signed onto three electoral asks:
1. To ban mining on prime agricultural land, nature refuges and potential wind energy sites
2. To legislate a moratorium on coal fired power stations in Queensland
3. To redirect subsidies from the fossil fuel industry in Queensland into funding for renewable energy and green jobs in Queensland.
Importantly, the alliance included landholder and rural conservation groups from Kingaroy, Haystack Plains, Felton and Alpha – all areas which are currently under threat from mining expansion. As discussed earlier in this thread, the first of these asks was largely adopted by the LNP and the Greens.
It is early days, sure, but I am very confident of that these initial steps are part of building a long-term and effective political alliance which makes the type of “green vs brown debate” mentioned above so very anachronistic to me. Much like myriad’s (#104) comment, there’s no silver bullet, but there’s also no secret to working collaboratively: you build trust, demonstrate integrity, show committment and respect, and work towards an understanding of each other’s values and aspirations. There is also no short-cut to this.
Ultimately, our frame of reference in the Six Degrees campaign is the preservation of Queensland’s productive landscapes, and the prioritisation of our energy and food security in the face of climate change. Considered in these terms, I would suggest that there is an obvious alignment of values between climate campaigners and rural communities.
These attitudes will be near impossible to change until the majority actually have the personal experience of the ecological, amenity and human cost of “their” energy supplies
Given the fuss that’s being made in Melbun right now about the prospect of new substations in residential areas, I don’t think this is going to be an easy education. People who don’t want a new substation to go with their new apartment but do want electricity in that apartment are obviously not connected with any reality, let alone parts of it that they can’t see. I wonder if the alternative solution of electricity on one day in two (or three) for each house would be more popular?
This is one reason why I’m in favour of things like the solar water heating subsidies an anything else that is within cooee of making sense by itself – having the power source in their house makes people more aware of the need for a power source. I would love to see some of the old power stations that remain in our big cities turned into new power stations of some sort, even coal or gas ones. Just because I think people should be reminded where this stuff comes from (and not “the sun” either).
Thanks everyone, the recent comments have been positive & of substance. It has almost restored my faith in human nature.
Brian #97
You have touched on a subject that I too am greatly interest in and this theme has been picked up by on the edge & moz as well. As authors of our own environment Australian society has insulated itself from any reality that may be unpleasant, unsightly, disconcerting or may soil our hands. Those who live close to the land live with the fact of a balance or the laws of nature, eg. You can’t have life without death. Moz gave the example of people taking power in their new apartments for granted & not making the connection with a sub station needed somewhere nearby. As on the edge said “an easy life with abundant cheap electricity.”
Our society demands cheap quality food but because of the loss of contact with the earth doesn’t make the connection that this food needs soil to grow in. Not just any soil but good soil. Run the old castrol ad through your mind & say soils aren’t soils. If you can make the connection you begin to see the absolute lunacy of mine developments at the likes of Haystack Rd & Felton.
In the 2001 Boyer Lecture s, Geoffrey Blainey talked about the lost of connection between Australian society & the land. Once most people in the city had cousins in rural Australia where now days most people have no connection with rural Australia, it’s people or the realities of the source of the recourses they consume without thought.
On the edge said “the problem we have is less political”. The truth of this as I see it is that like everything there is a connection. The mining company will operate under the regulative framework it is allowed. The EPA, which has taken criticism throughout this thread, operates under the direction of the minister & ultimately the Government. The Govt. is made up by politicians with one eye always on the next election and if the people in the electorates only wish for a comfortable, insulated life & put no pressure on Govt. for change then no change will happen.
Latest news from south of the border – The Greens have introduced a bill into the NSW Parliament “To protect prime agricultural land and water from mining damage”. More info at http://www.miningdirt.org.au
Lee Rhiannon MP said “The Greens have introduced this bill to safeguard the long term future of agricultural producers, such as the Caroona farmers in the fertile Liverpool Plains, who are battling to save the valuable farming land around Gunnedah. We are sending a clear message to the government that safeguarding farming land and water catchments needs to be put before mining interests. Future generations will pay for this destruction decades after profits have been posted and mining operations closed down.”
Top stuff.
still@downfall: one other positive is the rise of community gardening. It’s not so much that there’s more gardening going on in the cities as that it’s more visible. I’m not thrilled that one reason for this is that more back yards are paved so the gardens are now in community spaces, but it’s good that more space is used for gardens. More people are interested, too. Used to be that planting anything edible in public view was remarkable, these days people seem more inclined to come and ask whether you think can do the same. Of course I say yes
We’re nerving ourselves to plant our nature strip now that the front and back yards have all the soil under veges. Conservative neighbourhood…
Interesting.
JohnMac @ 106, that’s an impressive campaign. Nevertheless, although the Greens signed up to your three electoral asks, they did direct preferences in a number of seats to the one party that didn’t. I guess the Green agenda is broader than this one issue and regrettably may also be subject to considerations of political horse-trading.
I’ve just been chatting to someone who looked at the numbers. It seems that in 12 seats where the Greens allocated preferences to Labor, those preferences decided the outcome. And the election.
I’m just looking for the facts here. What say you?
Brian, you’re getting to the crux of the problem for the Greens in the country. At the election, the LNP said they’d protect Felton & Haystack from mining. The Greens had a more comprehensive policy of protecting farmland, however when it came to directing preferences they put Labor back in. Lots of my neighbours are very bitter about that. In the words of one, “Say what you like about the Greens, but at the end of the day they always support Labor”. Labor is not popular around these parts.They’re seen as being only interested in a tiny part of the southeast corner.There are floods in Brisbane, so Anna says the drought is over – there was a trickle into Toowomba’s dams, they’re up to 10.6% capacity. Kev’s budget had nothing for the Toowomba range crossing which carries 4000 heavy trucks a day, or the disgraceful Warrego Highway which carries so much traffic to and from the gas & coal rush area around Dalby. No funding in this budget means no funding for a long time because we’ll be broke for a while… Meanwhile, in NSW the Greens have introduced a bill to Parliament to protect ag land & water from mining. Brilliant stuff, but I think it will take a while for many in the country, particularly the west, to forgive the Greens for the regrowth clearing ban. If the govt had only gone to landholders and said “look, we want you to leave your regrowth to lock up carbon, so we’ll pay you a lot of money in compensation….”The reaction would have been very different, but in order to make that work we’d need a realistic price on carbon.
“I’m just looking for the facts here”… I reckon the necessary and sufficient fact to take on board is: the Fremantle result.
Apparently it’s a fact of electoral life that a large slab, most even, greens voters are “watermelon green”, green on the outside, red on the inside, ( apologies to serious socialists everywhere for conflating australian labor party voters-by-proxy with being ‘reds’). It’s seen in their preferences distributions, eg in the seat of Mt Cootha, they went against the tory more than 3 to 1.
In that seat the tory was only 400 behind the treasurer in the primary vote, and the green candidate held nearly 6000 votes to distribute between them. On those close numbers it might be thought the greens could leverage their crucial preferences to extract some environment-friendly promises from the treasurer or else…. However, any suggestion that the greens could actually officially recommend preferncing a tory is scoffed at by greens in the know, they say “we do that, and our primary vote gets cut to pieces, they’ll vote labor first”. It’s in the watermelon DNA.
In seats where the greens vote has reliably got above a certain preferences-coming-into-play threshold, probably about 15%, that watermelon rump effectively means: the tories can’t win. It must be galling to almost-there candidates like the one who was only 400 votes less popular than the treasurer.
Imagine if he, and the other tory candidates in seats that the green vote has frozen them out of, seriously contemplated the Fremantle result, and concluded: if the tories didn’t stand in these seats, like in fremantle, and we encouraged our constituency to hold its nose and vote green, we would get a green upinstead of labor as usual. And if that strategy was deployed in those 12 seats, we could be looking at a green/tory coalition government.
At which point the fact that the LNP had better policy alignment with the greens than labor did, ( no Traveston Dam, no coal-mining on farmland, a 44c/kwhr solar tariff) becomes relevant. Green environmental policies become the necessary and sufficient conditions for the tories forming government, in coalition with the greens. Imagine that.
So the tories have to come to the realisation: If we don’t contest seats the greens can win and we can’t, like what happened in Fremantle, if we help to get them up in those seats, if we have policies that allow those greens to form a coalition with us, then we can get to form government. What part of “too easy” don’t they understand?
Brian & Danny, maybe you should revisit comment 63 made by on the edge, only part of which is the quote below.
Maybe for our society to loose it’s addiction to cheap energy is just as possible for all those who would vote either LNP or Green to follow a unpalatable direction from their party leadership to vote in the manner you suggested Danny. But hey, it wasn’t all that long ago when the population of Brisbane gave no thought of where the water came from they wasted & a household water tank was like hen’s teeth. In the last few years this same population has done a sterling job in using & appreciating this valuable resource. Out of a crisis can come much good.
The Brisbane watertank experience is indeed an interesting example of change. Lest we get too many tickets on ourselves about our stirling job there just yet, let me say one word: Dengue. There was reasons ye olde watertankes of dayes of yore were disappeared: mosquitoe breeding heaven.
But I take your point, there was a massive turn around in consciousness and behaviour, even with restrictions. Almost un-postmodern-australian really. What was the secret, leadership? An well-crafted, easy to understand, action-oriented, slogan: “target 140″? A lurk to be had = rebates = something for almost nothing? All the above?
Speaking of tickets, I see that jewel in the crown of Australian life, Melbourne, is up to its neck, or down to its ankles, in trouble, big time. It’s water supply is down to 26% overall. Most worryingly, more than 60% of total capacity has been put in one basket-case reservoir, the Thomson, and it’s down to 17%, toowoomba territory.
It’s getting a bit ugly. The state gov’t there, like here, pushed through a pipeline scenario, Sugarloaf, and a lot of folks are upset that big-picture-environment-precious murray river water is going to be diverted to small-picture-lifestyle-precious melbournites. Pipeline-traverse property encumbents are suing individual pipeline workers for trespass as they go about their jobs. Just goes to show, when push comes to shove, civil society, the idea of common-wealth, can be a pretty thin veneer.
The saga continues. Below has been copied & pasted from Agforces e-newsletter I recieved today.
“Call for action after latest toxic mine spill
As south east Queensland cleans up from this week’s flooding, the north west of the State is facing its own water disaster with another toxic mine spill from the Great Australia Mine leaking into the Coppermine Creek. Property owners are concerned about contaminated stock water and the Cloncurry Council has warned residents not to go near the creek, which runs through the town because it could cause skin and eye irritations and affect breathing.
AgForce has pushed for government action following 10 separate mine spills earlier this year – including the Great Australia Mine – and welcomed yesterday’s announcement by Climate Change and Sustainability Minister Kate Jones of a new taskforce to ensure Central Queensland mines take greater responsibility for onsite water management.
However, more action was needed urgently and AgForce is calling on Minister for Natural Resources, Mines and Energy, Stephen Robertson, to provide:
* An inter-agency emergency response management plan to deal with off-site mine discharges.
* A governmental review of the current mine design guidelines and their ability to cope with extreme climatic events.
* Risk-assessment of mines to prevent further contamination events, and the subsequent amelioration of those sites identified as ‘at risk’.
* A review of the environmental bonds paid by resource companies to the EPA.”
A new taskforce huh… maybe they’ll make some recommendations, the industry will undertake to self regulate, best parctice, blah blah blah.
Meanwhile
“The Department of Infrastructure and Planning (DIP) in Queensland has decided that Exco’s Cloncurry Copper Project (CCP) is a “project of regional significance” for the purposes of the Water Resource (Great Artesian Basin) Plan 2006 (GAB Plan). This decision will be taken into consideration when assessing Exco’s application for an allocation of water from the State reserve.
Exco welcomes the DIP’s decision, which represents an important milestone as the Company continues to progress its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the CCP, in pursuit of the relevant approvals for the project.
The Company is focused on expediting the approvals process, which remains on the critical path for the project. Submission of the Environmental Impact Statement is expected during the current calendar quarter (Q2/2009). ”
Exco is the operator of the great Australia mine.
How about the government hits ‘em where it hurts, tells ‘em, “Sorry, we’re withdrawing your “project of regional significance” status, and your access to GAB water, until such time as you clean up your act, prove you can be environmentally responsible, till your true regional significance other than that of massive and wide-scale environmental degradation.”
Fat chance, this is why LaborMatesInc put a junior, Jones, and a failure, Robertson, in as the ministers, so nothing is guaranteed to happen.
Get your cockie members to put the hard word on Bob Katter, he’s a shareholder in the Great Australia mine. Or is he all hat, no cattle too?
#116 – Looks like another job for “Transitional Environmental Program Man (TEPM)” up at Coppermine Creek. What a sadly appropriate name for a watercourse.
TEPM turns up when plan A goes underwater and plan B doesn’t exist.
Well I did submit #116 believing in immediate results just as if I would believe in pigs flying. No doubt if I took the time to search for it, Kate Jones media release from the day before would contain much more flourish, spin, much sentiment of concern & most likely leaving out the bit about Cloncurry Council’s concerns. The major papers will on a slow news day publish it nearly word for word. If you put in your favourite search engine the words, coal+seam+water, up will come media releases from the mining companies & the Govt. spruiking about the huge windfall of this new resource with no downside that was going to be the salvation to regional towns under water restrictions. In comments 65 & 67 Jeff & Amypa related some real downsides with this water. The use by regional towns of this water has not occurred, just too many problems as outlined by Dalby Regional Council here.
Danny 117, Cloncurry & Bob Katter are a hell of a long way north of me. Just like southern inland Qld is over the horizon of the Toowoomba range for those living on the southern Qld coastline. The northern savannas are over the horizon for me. Back at comment 108 I gave a link to the 2001 Boyer lecture that Geoffrey Blainey entitled This Land is all Horizons. Here is a quote from there in which Blainey includes a quote from the poet Les Murray
Take note esp. of the last sentence, it will help you to understand why those immersed in their own part of the great diversity of rural production systems don’t cohesively work together in one advocacy group to combat the likes of impact of mining. The movie wasn’t released when Murray made this statement but I can picture a metaphor using the character Shrek. This is my swamp, leave me alone! I am not a monster, you misunderstand me. I am like an onion, I have many layers. I am frustrated by an inability to communicate to world that does not understand me.
Still@downfall, your last paragraph makes what is perhaps the most valuable and succinct comment I have seen on the difficulty of the issue of country people being more deeply “known” and “understood” by urban world citizens, we just don’t really want to be!!
No idea what to do about that, but we are a host for a city family on Farm Day next weekend. The cynics snigger, “You’ll be sorry” but I think I’ll take the risk.
Denise @ 112, a couple of things.
Anna Bligh doesn;t need me to defend her, but the “drought is over” remark was no doubt referring to the major SEQ dams passing 60% which was the long-determined level when restrictions were to be lifted. So I’m sure she meabt the water drought.
We won’t be broke. The Federal budget has receipts of $290.6 billion. The maximum interest we are scheduled to pay is about $7bn in a few years time. Imagine having a home mortgage with repayments between two and three per cent of your income. It’s a non-issue.
Infrastructure is part of the narrative for Labor at both state and national level, so there will be continuing money for that. We’ll just have to hope they spend it in the right places, but I’m not sorry they are fixing the road between here and Ipswich.
Qld Labor is in obvious trouble with their budget, but infrastructure spending will stay because of the jobs it creates.
I understand some people are busy on their tractors after the recent rain, but those who check out this site and not the blog generally might like to have a look at my post The drought is not over.
Stil@downfall
“The farming world is a network of small sovereignties, and whatever you may think of the next sovereign, he or she is there, like a hill or a swamp, not to be easily manipulated or wished away”
I was listening to the news on the way to work and a story coming out of Africa about foreign buying of farming land highlighted a problem common where corporation confronts community. In Niger a Libyan company supported by the Libyan government has taken control of a large tract of prime farming land (5000 hectares of a parcel purchase of 100,000 hectares). And have done 2 things that represent the failure of understanding of community. Firstly, there is a particular tree that is very important to local people for certain things which this company has started ripping out. Secondly, thay have block cattle paths which allow local cattle to move around, to and from water holes and grazing locations. There may have been more, but I have to stop listening when the stupidity rises above 150 decibells.
I have dubbed this, “toxic haste”….spreading across the land.
Brian, This is also an answer to comment 9 on the drought is not over thread. We got 32 mm out of the recent rain but the reason I’m submitting here is that the upper catchment of the Woleebee Creek recieved 140 mm. That area over this summer has been recieving less rainfalll & this fall onto dry earth has resulted in a flood going through the proposed Xstrata Wandoan coal mine site. This has been covered previously in this thread in comments 15, 37, 42, 52, 54 & 64.
Must go the tractor awaits. I did get some sleep last night, can’t keep up with my nieghbour who on the intinial day of planting works 24 hrs straight & then settles down to 18 hr days.
140mm is a fair dump, but I recall events of 200mm or more (up to 11 inches – 275mm) a bit further south at times in the past 5 years when it was raining west, south and east of the Wivenhoe Dam catchment. The heaviest I remember in my youth in the area was 225mm (9 inches) in three days. These heavier falls are to be expected with climate change and may not show up in the record when an EIS is being prepared. I think we said that upthread.
Stay safe. I had trouble staying awake, especially just before dawn.
BilB, China is expecting a 30% drop in food production by 2030 and India over 20%, in their case with a rising population. Some countries are buying land in poor developing countries to produce their own food, putting their own people in to do it and contributing minimally to the local economy.
Good luck with the planting, all. We are into it today. A gentle couple of inches to get us going here. Can’t argue with the timing!
Farm family wrestles energy giant
TOXIC HASTE good one BilB # 123
An update on Denise’s comment # 109 about the vote which occurred on June 4th in the NSW Parliament on the bill introduced by Greens member Lee Rhiannon – Mining (Safeguarding Agricultural Land and Water From Mining) Amendment Bill 2009. Here is an eyewitness account that was linked to off the sixdegrees web site: Author Denis Wilson is a naturalist, photographer and “Blogger” The bill was defeated by only one vote with Government MPs, the Shooters Party and Rev Fred Nile voting against. Read Denis Wilson’s blog on the link above, he is scathing of Fred Nile who could not bring himself to vote with the Greens no matter what & he holds the belief that the Labor Govt. did a deal with the Shooters Party.
This is a link to Lee Rhiannon site: http://www.miningdirt.org.au/
Tomorrow night the well known ABC program 4 corners is investigating the issue of mining on prime farming land. A preview of the program is available here.
Taa for alert…
Once upon a time a cracking good four corners would stir the rest of the journalistic establishment to action, and occasionally things would happen as a result. Recently there have been at least two such cracking good 4C’s which in days gone by would have been picked up: one on the disgrace that is our aged care system, and the other the appalling immigration department ( vanstone days) boat drownings in torres strait. Alas, neither garnered any further interest in the wider press, there must have been a sale of the century on bubble gum or something to distract them. That’s right, utegate.
Given the current australia/china rio-tinto delicate situation, it’ll be interesting to see if the program mentions the swag of land out Gunnedah way that has been licensed off by the NSW gov’t, 200 sq miles, to shenhua, a huge chinese state-owned power and mining company. Apparently they are out buying up whatever properties of the district they can.
Cheers.
I’ve put up a new post on the Four Corners program – Mining the good earth.