CONTAMINATED water from a coalmine is flowing into the Georges River, south of Sydney, at levels that are toxic to aquatic life, an independent water quality report has shown.

A plume of saline water stretched along the river for 15 kilometres from the discharge point of an underground mine operated by Endeavour Coal, a subsidiary of BHP Billiton’s Illawarra Coal.

Discharges from West Cliff colliery near Appin are ”causing serious water pollution that is very likely to be damaging in-stream ecosystems,” says the report, which was completed on a voluntary basis by researchers from the University of Western Sydney.

But the environmental protection licence for the mine’s wastewater discharge does not limit the amount of saline water that can be flushed into the river.

”I can’t believe that we have put out something called an environment protection licence without any provision to protect the environment,” one of the authors, Dr Ian Wright, a freshwater ecologist at UWS, said. ”Salt at these levels is huge in the context of a river … If you sprayed it on your tomatoes they would wilt.”

The NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water said it was evaluating salt discharge levels that had already been measured by BHP Billiton at the site.

”There is currently no limit for salinity,” a spokesman for the department said. ”However, salinity discharges to Brennans Creek are currently regulated by a staged pollution reduction program under the current environment protection licence.”

”The outcomes of this … program will be used to determine salinity discharge requirements to be included on the licence.”

The company was being asked to develop a plan to limit pollution and report back by June next year, he said.

A BHP Billiton spokeswoman said: ”Illawarra Coal has been working with [the department] since 2004 to address the level of influence from its operations and implemented a range of initiatives that have improved water quality in the West Cliff Mine’s Brennans Creek dam.

”The company remains committed to continuing those improvement initiatives.”

When tested last month, the water discharged from the mine was five times more saline than the safe level recommended by the Australian and New Zealand Environment Conservation Council, a standard used by governments to determine water quality for aquatic life. It was nearly 10 times more saline than water in surrounding creeks.

The researchers tested upstream and downstream from the discharge pipe and also the water flowing directly from it.

They concluded that the environmental protection licence ”provides little effective protection to the Georges River” and said it was likely to damage the river’s ecosystems, meaning small invertebrates, fish and related denizens of the local food chain.

The colliery forms part of the company’s proposal to extend a series of coalmines around the township of Appin, so as to be able to extract $2 billion worth of coal a year for 30 years.

CRITICAL infrastructure supplying Sydney’s drinking water is likely to be damaged by vast new coalmines planned for the city’s south-western outskirts, government agencies have told the Planning Assessment Commission.

But government staff who raised serious concerns about the environmental impact were told by senior bureaucrats not to present their objections at a public hearing, according to memos obtained by the Herald.

They show senior public servants were allowed to present to the Planning Assessment Commission’s panel of mining and environment experts in private, rather than at a public Planning Assessment Commission hearing in February.

BHP Billiton also made its presentation to the panel in private.

In its submission, the Sydney Catchment Authority said the new BHP Billiton mines could cause the Upper Canal near Campbelltown to overflow as the earth cracks and shifts on the surface above the mine. The walls of the canal, which links Sydney’s main Prospect Reservoir to dams south of the city, will be at risk of collapse, while the agency said it was ”not satisfied” that several other dams, tunnels, weirs and aqueducts would remain ”safe and serviceable”.

Some of the water flowing into the main dams that supply southern Sydney and Wollongong is also likely to be contaminated by the effects of mining, though the impurities will probably be diluted to negligible levels, it said.

Other agencies, including Industry and Investment NSW and the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water, offered equally scathing and detailed criticism of the $60-billion plan, which is being assessed.

The submissions put several government agencies on a collision course with BHP Billiton, which says the financial viability of its entire operation in the Bulli Seam mines around Appin would be compromised if mining is scaled back further.

Longwall mining can crack rivers and drain swamps as the earth above longwall mine panels warps and splits, but BHP Billiton believes that, based on experience with other mines in NSW, most damage can be repaired.

The company has already agreed not to mine under some of the more endangered rivers in the proposed 220-square kilometre mining zone, leaving buffer zones that largely comply with the recommendations of the 2008 Southern Coalfields Inquiry.

But the catchment authority examined BHP Billiton’s proposal and concluded that the ground could sink or tilt over a metre around the Upper Canal because of mining, and this was ”likely to result in the canal overflowing”, and ”fracturing could result in increased leakage or collapse of the canal wall.”

The Nepean tunnel, which is the main conduit for water supply to the Macarthur district, was also in serious danger of cracking and damage, the authority said.

Broughtons Pass Weir, described by the authority as ”the most critical piece of infrastructure involved with sole supply of water to the Macarthur Area” could suffer damage that would not leave it ”safe and serviceable”.

Industry and Investment NSW did not object to the proposal going ahead, but said the company’s proposed rehabilitation strategy was ”inadequate”.

”Public confidence takes a knock when government agencies that are critical of the project are heard behind closed doors,” said the NSW Greens MP, Lee Rhiannon.

The commission is expected to report to government in April.

A LANDMARK court decision yesterday cleared the way for an environment group to pursue a power company for allegedly allowing toxic water to spill into the Sydney Water catchment near Lithgow.

The Blue Mountains Conservation Society was granted the right to have its court costs capped, allowing it to go ahead with a case against Delta Electricity, the operator of Wallerawang coal-fired power station. Delta Electricity obtained a two-week adjournment to consider whether to appeal the judgment.

Heavy metals and contaminants such as arsenic, copper, boron and very high levels of salt are thought to have been leaching out into a section of the Coxs River and killing aquatic life, based on a series of independent tests and regular monitoring by the company.

Delta Electricity and the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change have known about the discharges for at least two years. But the company has been operating within the boundaries of its environmental protection licence, which requires that Delta monitors its discharges but does not require that some of the pollution levels be reduced.

The NSW Land and Environment Court decision, delivered by Justice Nicola Pain, marks the first time an environment group in NSW has been able to guard itself against escalating costs. Justice Pain ordered that any costs incurred at the end of the case be limited to $20,000, the maximum the conservation society says it can pay in the event that it loses the case.

”This is a precedent which hopefully will be very encouraging for other environment groups,” said a society spokeswoman, Tara Cameron. ”Now we are looking forward to pursuing the case and our main concern is back on stopping the pollution in the Coxs River. There are salts and heavy metals that we know don’t belong there and the Coxs River is dying.”

Delta Electricity has maintained it operates within its license conditions and has provided the government monitoring authority with regular updates on discharges from its power station.

The Department of Environment and Climate Change has recently reviewed Delta’s environmental protection license and believes it is appropriate. It says its licensing system is stringent and many prosec-utions have been carried out against companies that have breached licenses in the past two years.

A report compiled by a University of Western Sydney researcher, Dr Ian Wright, found that arsenic levels downstream from the plant were ”large and unnatural”, but were unlikely to pose a risk to human health. High levels of copper, boron, fluoride and salt ”were likely to be toxic to aquatic ecosystems”.

The Opposition spokesman on the Blue Mountains, Michael Richardson, said the case exposed flaws in the state’s system of controlling toxic discharges.

“This case is not solely about the safety of Sydney’s water,” Mr Richardson said. ”It’s about the Government’s environmental protection licenses not protecting the environment.”

The Environmental Defen-ders of NSW, which is undertaking the case on behalf the society, said the decision was in the public interest.