Sydney Morning Herald
23rd July, 2009

GOVERNMENTS would be unwise to think they can easily ignore the public concern that is building up over plans to mine coal under the black soil of the Liverpool Plains. The region, with its rich volcanic earth and rarely failing aquifers, has long been among Australia’s most productive farming areas for grain. Those aquifers also feed the headwaters of the Murray-Darling river system. The region’s farms and towns exemplify sustainable agriculture when so much else is shrinking from drought and climate change.

Many will wonder at the ultimate rationality of encouraging more coal production at the expense of high-grade farmland when the world has recently experienced a foretaste of the worldwide grain supply shortages that may be in prospect and is trying to limit greenhouse gases, and in Australia’s case when it is desperately trying to revive its major river system.

The money of the big mining companies is sweeping these doubts aside, in the corridors of government at least. Between them, BHP Billiton and China’s Shenhua have paid $400 million upfront to the cash-strapped NSW Government – already pretty captive to the coal and power industries anyway – for exploration rights. Now the Federal Government’s Foreign Investment Review Board has given Shenhua clearance to buy some of the 25 farms it intends to purchase on the surface of its lease at three times the going rate for farmland.

Even conservative farmers and rural folk, traditionally dismissive of greenie concerns, have been galvanised into protest, mounting a blockade of BHP Billiton operations and launching a court case over alleged corner-cutting in the NSW Government’s approvals. The miners say they will take all care to mine under ridges rather than cultivated land. Aside from the billion tonnes or more of coal in this area, they see this kind of dispute threatening their interests in Queensland’s Darling Downs and elsewhere.

Belatedly, the state has agreed to a hydrological study to see if aquifers are really in danger. But it may not be possible for scientists to reach any definite conclusion. With so much money already laid out, it will then be difficult for the State Government to refuse or limit consent to mine. Since relations with China are already jarred over foreign investment rules, Canberra will be equally cautious.

The answer has to lie in the science, giving the hydrologists the resources and time they need for a full study. If mining proceeds, extraction should be tailored to avoid damage to water sources and restoration of damaged farmland should be insisted upon.

Four Corners
20th July 2009

This week on Four Corners: “The Good Earth”, the story of the high stakes battle now being fought between government, farmers and mining companies for the control of Australia’s most fertile agricultural land.

Sydney Morning Herald
15th June, 2009

DOCTORS in Lithgow have protested against the use of industrial run-off in the town’s drinking water, saying it could be contributing to the area having some of the state’s worst rates of cancer, heart disease and other health problems.

All the town’s general practitioners have signed a letter to the local council saying that plans to increase the amount of recycled industrial water, including water used to flush out a coalmine, could be dangerous. No research has been done on possible links between heavy metals in the water and health effects.

The town began to add water extracted from the nearby Clarence Colliery to its drinking supply in 2002, to help make the town drought-proof. The council wants to nearly double the amount to more than 5 million litres a day.

“Lithgow residents unfortunately suffer from some of the worst health statistics in the state,” the doctors’ letter says. “It is reasonable to suspect that some of these adverse outcomes derive from environmental exposures relating to the region’s industrial activities.”

The NSW Government, which is responsible for issuing and updating pollution licences for coalmines, said the colliery had not exceeded its licence and that the council was in charge of providing healthy drinking water.

The Lithgow City Council maintains the water is safe, pointing out that most monthly quality tests in the past two years have shown no breaches of health guidelines. Drinking guidelines for aluminium content have been exceeded six times and iron once.

“Based on that information, I think we’re doing a very good job of meeting water guidelines,” said the council’s general manager, Roger Bailey.

But doctors told the Herald that residents often complained about the water and many preferred to rely on rainwater tanks. One doctor said he filtered his water at home because of concerns about the recycled industrial water.

Heart disease and cancer rates in Lithgow are 20 per cent above the state average, along with a range of other illnesses. Some of the high rates can be accounted for by smoking and lifestyle factors but the doctors believe pollution may play a role.

Richard Stiles, a GP, said he became concerned after reading a NSW Health bulletin that referred to nickel content in the Lithgow water supply.

It said the content was several times the guidelines for Australian drinking water although it posed no known human health hazard.

“We would really like to know exactly what is in the water, so it would be good to have some transparency on this,” Dr Stiles said.

Another signatory and the chairman of the Lithgow Medical Council, John Dearin, presented the doctors’ concerns to a council meeting on Monday night. “From a public health point of view, it concerns us,” Dr Dearin said.

“I believe we need to look at other sources of groundwater and other ways to augment the water supply instead of using water from the mine.”

Chris Jonkers, of the Lithgow Environment Group, said his home at Blackmans Flat, near Lithgow, was among properties to be put on the town water supply if plans to increase the use of recycled industrial water went ahead.

“I don’t want to give Lithgow a bad reputation but there seems to me to be a correlation between the pretty bad health figures and the use of industrial water,” Mr Jonkers said.

“It seems reasonable that we should be able to get that checked out.”

Sydney Morning Herald
26th June, 2009

IN THE first decision made under new mining laws, the NSW Government has approved modified plans for a massive expansion of coalmining under Sydney’s drinking water catchment.

The first proposal put forward by a subsidiary of the United States mining giant Peabody Energy was changed after the Government found it would cause unacceptable river damage but yesterday it accepted a scaled-back plan as a trade-off between the environment and jobs.

The company will be able to mine under Woronora Dam, which supplies drinking water to the Sutherland Shire and Wollongong, but will leave buffer zones around sections of the Waratah Rivulet and other catchment rivers.

Waratah Rivulet was affected by longwall mining in 2004, when subsidence caused large cracks to open, draining the water away. The company’s attempts to fix the cracks with resin had mixed results.

The new plans allows mining under other sections of the river but a kilometre-long stretch will not be touched, and 8.6 million tonnes of coal will be left in the ground.

“The result is a determination that protects our drinking water supply and the environment, streamlines assessment and regulation and, significantly, captures $154 million in annual wages and 1950 jobs”, said the Planning Minister, Kristina Keneally.

The plans were modified in response to public criticism of the mine expansion, along with concerns raised by the Department of Environment and Climate Change and the Sydney Catchment Authority.

While it has scaled back its plans, the company has been allowed to undertake longwall mining – where the mine roof collapses after coal is removed – under waterways where it had dug preliminary shafts.

The department said mining here would “result in some adverse residual environmental impacts, primarily by way of subsidence impacts” and recommended these be remediated “where reasonable and feasible”. The company’s environmental assessment also predicted damage to the nearby Princes Highway, parts of which could sink by up to a metre.

Yesterday’s decision is the first since the Southern Coalfields inquiry recommended that the onus of proof be put on mining companies to demonstrate they they would not cause unacceptable damage to the environment.

The director of the Total Environment Centre, Jeff Angel, said he was disappointed the project was granted 20-year approval instead of staged approval.

Sydney Morning Herald
19th June, 2009

THE State Government knew more than two years ago that a river feeding Sydney’s water supply was being contaminated with high levels of toxic metals and poisons including arsenic.

As volunteers testing water samples in the Coxs River near Lithgow began to share their alarming findings with the Sydney Catchment Authority in 2006, the NSW Government was presenting the operators of the coal-fired power station with a “green globe” award for water recycling at a gala event at Parliament House, hosted by the former energy minister Joe Tripodi.

Delta Electricity, the operator of Wallerawang power station, shared the prize with Centennial Coal for a scheme allowing the recycling of 9 billion litres of water from a nearby coal mine for use in the power station – and for release into the Coxs River.

Documents obtained by the Herald reveal the authority was worried about water quality near the power station for several years, and warned the Department of Environment and Climate Change, including the then minister, Bob Debus.

“[We are] concerned that there is no requirement for monitoring by Springvale Colliery … of water pumped from underground workings and transferred into the Sydney drinking water catchment,” the catchment authority told the department in 2007, referring to the recycling scheme that won the “green globe” award.

As revealed in the Herald yesterday, independent tests on water discharged from the power station have found high levels of heavy metals, including copper, boron, aluminium and arsenic. Aquatic ecosystems in the river have suffered severely, but there is no known risk to human health.

Officials were also concerned. A meeting between departmental and catchment authority staff in 2007 recorded that the situation in the Coxs River “requires action” and concluded that “some licences require monitoring but do not have limits for exceedances”.

The environmental licence held by Delta Electricity has been modified in the past two years to reduce some of the discharges and the company had to pay a pollutant fee of $397,000 for releasing 6500 tonnes of salt into the water in 2007.

But the company is still not required to measure many of the toxic substances identified, and no limits are imposed on many of the metals.

The environment department said last night that aspects of Delta’s licence were being reviewed.

The Minister for the Environment, Carmel Tebbutt, said her department was vigilant in monitoring heavy polluters. “The NSW Government has the strictest environmental licensing system in Australia. It is comprehensive and has strong deterrents, with breaches punishable by fines of up to $5 million or seven years’ jail.”

Ms Tebbutt said licences were reviewed regularly. In the past year 1800 directions had been issued ordering businesses to change their behaviour. But contamination in parts of Sydney’s drinking water catchment may be more widespread than first thought, the most recent audit in 2007 finding that a large proportion of water quality testing sites throughout the entire catchment were questionable.

The report found “nearly 60 per cent of the water quality parameters exceeded [official] guideline values at 40 per cent of locations”, a rise on the previous year. Exceeding those guidelines does not necessarily mean the water is polluted or unsafe but that its pollution levels merit more tests.

The Opposition said yesterday that the licence system was not functioning because there was not enough enforcement.

“Apparently, the polluters can pollute as much as they want, provided they measure what they were doing,” said the Opposition spokesman for the Blue Mountains, Michael Richardson.

A cattle farmer, Pat Hennessy, who has lived on the Coxs River for more than 50 years, was philosophical. He used to pump river water into the house and use it for drinking; now he uses only bore water. He said he did not know whether the river was contaminated but said he would not like to try drinking it.

“You can’t do much about it; you can’t close the power station.”

Sydney Morning Herald
18th June, 2009

HEAVY metals and poisons such as arsenic, copper and boron are leaching out of a coal-fired power station near Lithgow, wiping out marine life in a river that feeds Sydney’s drinking water supply.

The Department of Environment and Climate Change has known about the discharge from Wallerawang power station since last year, but has done nothing to stop it, although it said last night that it was reviewing the evidence.

Independent research exposes serious gaps in the environmental licensing system used by the NSW Government, with implications for other industrial sites around the state. The licence conditions of the power station’s operator, Delta Electricity, do not put specific limits on many kinds of heavy metal pollution.

“[The department] is satisfied that current licence conditions at Delta are appropriate but acknowledges there may be room for improvement,” a spokeswoman said. The department said it maintains “strong regulatory control” over Delta’s operations.

But it took tests from a University of Western Sydney researcher to show that water flowing into the Coxs River was laced with high levels of copper, boron (a naturally occurring chemical), and other metals at many times the levels found upstream of the power station, exceeding recommended guidelines many times over.

High arsenic levels were found downstream from the plant “indicating the large and unnatural increase above natural background arsenic levels in the upper Coxs River catchment”, according to a report by the researcher, Ian Wright. The arsenic is diluted downstream and is not thought to pose a human health risk.

Copper was measured close to the power station at between 30 and 50 times natural levels, and boron levels were 25 times higher than upstream, while fluoride levels meant water in the Coxs River on public land did not meet drinking water guidelines. The water was 17 to 50 times as salty downstream from the power station, at levels “likely to be toxic to aquatic ecosystems”, according to Dr Wright.

His research will be used for a case to be put before the NSW Land and Environment Court, which will argue that Delta Electricity is polluting the Coxs River and should be made to stop.

The Blue Mountains Conservation Society, with the backing of the Environmental Defender’s Office of NSW, is hoping for a limit to be put on potential costs before it can seek a court hearing.

The group also intends to challenge the statewide system of environmental licences.

“These licences are just licences to pollute,” the society’s president, Tara Cameron, said. “They are just allowing the status quo and making people feel good without actually protecting the environment.”

The Department of Environment and Climate Change said it had been watching Delta Electricity closely. “In February 2009 the [department] prosecuted Delta in the Land and Environment Court for a breach of its licence for Wallerawang power station. The court fined Delta $45,000 for not controlling dust on its ash disposal area,” the spokeswoman said.

A review of heavy metal concentrations in the Upper Coxs River catchment area was under way, she said.

Under the terms of its licence, Delta Electricity is required to test water up- and downstream of the power station for selenium, boron, manganese, iron fluoride and sulphate, as well as turbidity and a measure of water-borne particles described as “total suspended solids”.

The results of the company’s own measurements were lodged with the Department of Water and Energy annually, a spokeswoman for Delta Electricity said.

“The water quality in this area of the river is affected by a number of factors outside power station operation, including urbanisation, mining (current and historic) and very old former mine site rehabilitation activities,” the spokeswoman said. However, Dr Wright’s report and tests by volunteers strongly suggest the elevated levels of heavy metals in the river come from the power station.

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.

Sydney Morning Herald
10th June 2009

SYDNEY’S drinking water supply in and around the historic Cataract Dam is about to be undercut by multistorey longwall coalmines, in a case that will test the NSW Government’s willingness to apply its own environmental guidelines.

Packed beneath the pristine reservoir, near Appin, lie tens of millions of tonnes of high-quality coking coal, greatly desired by the Indian steel industry.

Ambitious new plans submitted to the Government from the mining corporation Gujarat NRE would intensify mining in the area for decades to come, tripling the mine’s output.

But cutting out the coal would cause the drinking water catchment, which supplies Sydney and the Illawarra, to crack and tilt due to subsidence, with unknown – though almost certainly negative – effects on the water supply.

The company may have to seriously modify its plans to counter environmental concerns. Government sources told the Herald there was no choice but to try to rein in the company in the face of clear evidence of potential damage to the water catchment area.

As well as foreshadowing damage to waterways, the company’s initial proposal also conceded that there was a “high level of risk” to Telstra fibre optic cables, electricity and water pipelines and roads in the area. “Detailed assessment is warranted to address this high risk rating,” its report said.

The company said it was working out what level of environmental damage could be tolerated, after being told by the Director-General of the Planning Department that it would take into account recommendations of a landmark inquiry into coal mining.

The independent southern coalfields inquiry, released last year, found that mining was causing serious damage in the water catchment and the Government should require a reverse onus of proof on companies seeking to mine in sensitive areas.

Longwall mining, in which broad panels of coal a few metres high and hundreds of metres wide are bored out of the earth, causes ground above the mines to subside.

Above other multi-level mines in NSW, such as the Newstan Colliery near Lake Macquarie, the surface has dropped by as much as five metres in places.

Gujarat NRE’s head of technical services said there was no evidence yet that earlier mining beneath the dam had led to cracking and loss of water, though there could be some undetected “microcracking”.

“If there will be subsidence of a nature that would cause catastrophic damage to a significant surface feature, then we would consider not extracting that,” said Chris Harvey, Gujarat’s head of technical services.

Gujarat NRE has hired consultants to prepare a new report on the environmental impacts of the mine expansion and said it may submit the research for peer review if required.

A spokesman for the planning department said inquiry findings would “form a key part of the department’s assessment of these projects”.

Environment groups and the NSW Opposition believe that mining under the drinking water supply should be stopped or more closely controlled.

“The Gujarat proposal is up there at the extreme end of longwall mining proposals and we know from experiences that there will be serious damage,” said Dave Burgess, a spokesman for the Total Environment Centre.

The NSW Liberal MP, Michael Richardson, said a number of subsidence problems had been “created by single-seam longwall coalmines where reasonable predictions could be made but no such predictions are possible with multi-seam mines”.

“Any damage under Cataract reservoir would be invisible but the water loss would be ongoing and the damage almost certainly irreparable,” Mr Richardson said.