Sydney Morning Herald
15th June, 2009
ONCE again Sydney’s planners are confronted with a conflict between developers wanting to extract the maximum return from land, and the environmental impact on the rest of us. This one involves not more gargantuan construction above ground – the sort of row so familiar to Sydney – but more massive movement down below.
Gujarat NRE Minerals, a subsidiary of a big Indian company, wants to expand its underground coalmine near Appin, between Sydney and Wollongong. In so doing, environmentalists say, the company runs a risk of cracking the catchment of Cataract Dam, which happens to lie partly above the mining lease. The dam on the upper Nepean River, built 102 years ago, supplies Sydney and the Illawarra region with drinking water. Much as a bigger mine may be good for Sydney’s economy, the city needs its water protected more than it needs extra coal.
Gujarat’s plans come as coal looms to centre stage in Australia’s attempts to tackle global warming. Coal is our biggest export earner. We rely on thermal coal for 83 per cent of our electricity, even more in NSW. Greg Combet, the federal minister charged with talking the coal industry into accepting the Government’s planned carbon emissions reduction scheme, is fast running out of patience. In Sydney last week Kevin Rudd made it clear the Government had no plans to abandon the coal industry for nuclear power. Rather, he said, the answer was to invest in “clean coal”, the untried and unproven technology for capturing and storing carbon from burnt coal.
The Gujarat mine’s coking coal, used to make steel, is hardly immune from all this. Like some thermal coalmines, its seams emit methane, a more toxic greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. As the company seeks State Government approval to triple its output, the fate of the water above poses an even greater environmental worry. Longwall mining, one method used, is known to cause surface subsidence. Gujarat’s statement to the Herald that it would “consider” not doing anything that caused “catastrophic damage” is hardly reassuring.
Mr Combet reminds us that Australia has hundreds of years of coal reserves left. We do not necessarily have the same guaranteed supply of water ahead of us. Saving every drop counts, especially in this mine’s region, where Sydney’s population is expanding ever southwards. The Cataract Reservoir land is owned by the Sydney Catchment Authority, a statutory body. The Government must put Sydney’s interests first, and stop any expansion that allows even a fraction of the city’s drinking water to leak into a coalmine.
