Adani : Carmichael Coal Mine : Federal Court set aside government approval

A reply to a letter sent to Greg Hunt, Minister for the Environment :

Thank you for your email concerning the Carmichael Coal Mine in Queensland.

The Australian Government is committed to protecting the environment, including the Great Barrier Reef and addressing climate change.

Over the next decade, more than $2 billion will be invested in improving the health of the Reef. We have also implemented a new shipping plan to provide additional protection for the Reef.

When the Coalition was elected, the Reef was under threat of being listed as in-danger by the World Heritage Committee. After significant new funding investments and policy changes to ban capital dredge disposal, the Committee has held Australia up as a global role model in the management of the Reef and our Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan.

We are also committed to addressing climate change and are well on track to achieve our emissions reduction target by 2020 and have set a target of a 26-28 per cent reduction by 2030 based on 2005 emissions. This is a strong and credible target and will see Australia make one of the most significant contributions per capita with emissions reducing by at least 50 per cent.

In regards to the Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project, the Federal Court recently, with consent of all parties, formally set aside the approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth). This related to a technical, administrative matter and, to remove doubt, the Department advised that the decision should be reconsidered.

The decision was taken after a thorough environmental impact assessment process occurring over several years. The assessment looked at impacts on all relevant nationally protected matters, including the ornamental snake and yakka skink and included strict conditions to protect these two species. Another key species for which there were robust protections put in place is the black-throated finch, with approximately 31,000 hectares required to be protected. The project approval also included world-class environmental conditions for the protection of water, including a requirement for the return of at least 730 mega-litres of water per year for ten years to the Great Artesian Basin.

We will now be reconsidering the approval decision on the project. While we appreciate you may not support this project, the Government is required to assess these projects under environmental law without fear or favour in accordance with our strict national environmental laws.

Thank you for writing on this matter.

Yours sincerely

Deb Callister

Assistant Secretary

Assessments (Qld, Tas, Vic) & Policy Implementation Branch

Environment Standards Division

Department of the Environment

More pollution for Gladstone, Queensland following oil shale processing development

Thanks to Denis Wilson of the Southern Highlands of NSW and The Nature of Robertson for drawing my attention to this Media Statement from the Queensland Government regarding Oil Shale.  I would ask Networkers to read the material at the link I have inserted. As Denis points out in his comments - and the linked article does too - there are real causes for concern.  Denis comments:

Queensland Government is determined to take their State back to the Dark Ages.

Oil Shale was the very earliest oil industry in Australia - several operations here in NSW Southern Highlands, at Joadja and Welby in the late 1800s.

Those operations were closed down early, because the project was inefficient and dirty. No doubt they will tell us that the new extraction processes are much smarter than the old ones.

But then again, it sounds a lot like the operations in the Marcellus Shale in the USA. And we all know how disastrous that is turning out to be.

Please spread the word.

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Further to Denis's comments above and the Media Statements below, Miss Eagle finds it interesting to compare the locations of oil shale deposits and the Great Artesian Basin.  Miss Eagle wonders what questions governments or local communities may ask themselves with regard to this feature of interest.

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Media Statements

JOINT STATEMENT

Minister for Environment and Heritage Protection
The Honourable Andrew Powell

Minister for Natural Resources and Mines
The Honourable Andrew Cripps

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Newman Government approves oil shale industry

The creation of new jobs and broad economic benefits are expected, following the Newman Government announcement that it will allow the development of a commercial oil shale industry in Queensland under strict environmental conditions.

Natural Resources and Mines Minister, Andrew Cripps, said the Government’s new oil shale policy sets rigorous environmental controls on the industry and will allow existing oil shale operator QER Limited to progress its trial plant at Gladstone to commercial stage.

“Queensland currently has around 90 per cent of Australia’s known oil shale resources, which are equivalent to approximately 22 billion barrels of oil,” Mr Cripps said.

“As the world supply of conventional crude oil diminishes, there are strong prospects for oil shale to become the next major source of liquid fuel supplies in Australia, and Queensland is well placed to lead that charge.

“The industry has the potential to create thousands of new jobs in the construction phase alone, and provide royalties and other economic benefits for our regional communities and the broader economy, which is great news for Queensland.”

Minister Cripps said the new oil shale policy would:

• recognise the strategic importance of oil shale to contribute to energy security, and encourage private sector investment in high quality oil shale extracting technologies
• ensure project proponents must first demonstrate their oil shale technology will meet high environmental standards and community expectations
• allow, in general, the consideration and development of other oil shale deposits in Queensland, pending thorough environmental assessment on a project by project basis
• continue the existing 20-year moratorium suspending development of the McFarlane oil shale deposit near Proserpine until 2028

Minister for Environment and Heritage Protection, Andrew Powell, emphasised that strict environmental controls would apply to any proposal to mine and process oil shale.

“To date, there has been extremely limited commercial application of oil shale in Australia and overseas,” Mr Powell said.

“That’s why any proposed oil shale development will be subject to detailed environmental assessments on a project-by-project basis. 

“We will consider these proposals on their merits and require a trial stage to determine the feasibility and environmental performance of any unproven technologies.

“The approval process for any oil shale development will demand that operators adopt best practice environmental management techniques and comprehensive monitoring of the process, its emissions, wastes and impact on the community and environmental settings.

“Under the new policy, existing operator Queensland Energy Resources Ltd (QER) will be able to proceed directly to commercial production, but new entrants to the industry will need to prove their oil shale extraction technologies through trials.

“Importantly, both existing and new operators in the oil shale industry will need to prepare full Environmental Impact Statements for their projects.”

Mr Powell said the QER pilot plant near Gladstone has successfully demonstrated the viability of its processing technology.

“The report into the QER plant demonstrated it operated well within the environmental performance requirements of its Environmental Authority issued by my department,” he said.

13 February 2013

Further Information:

Oil shale is a fine grained sedimentary rock containing organic matter called kerogen. It is a completely different industry and extraction process to shale gas or shale oil.

Hydrocarbons are derived from oil shale that has been mined and then heated in a processing plant.  This process produces vapours which are condensed and converted into synthetic crude oil, and then refined to produce ultra-low sulphur transport fuels.

Maria Riedl and Jon Altman on the Wild Rivers of Queensland and LNP plans

Picture from here

Maria writes to Minister Burke to protest Queensland government intentions to regulate wild rivers...

5 March 2013

Dear Minister Burke,

I would like to draw your attention to yet again Queensland government intentions to regulate wild rivers. Their actions would impact on International agreements such as CAMBA JAMBA ROKAMBA and RAMSAR wetlands as well as the aquifers, other important but not listed wetlands and areas which depend on the free flowing, unregulated systems and other states.

This is madness on the part of the blinkered Queensland government and totally disregards the impacts any regulation of these rivers would cause. There needs to be a referral to the commonwealth. There needs to be a strategic assessment immediately on the impact of separated proposals as well. Not only would the ecological diversity and biological health of matters dependent upon these free wild rivers but what about the associated infrastructure, the changes to direction of flows, the alteration of inflows to other rivers, wetlands, aquifers such as the GBR, roads, dams, pipelines...

Perhaps it is time to take a very microscopic look at the GBR and a strategic assessment of it before we have yet again the terrible Impacts as in the MBD replicated.

Queensland seems to be rushing, without referrals and without consultation with other states on the impacts of regulating wild rivers.

Aren't we ALL living in Australia, or is Queensland a separate country that does not care or consider impacts on the entire system of the GBR, the Lake Eyre Basin and even impacts on the MDB?

I ask the you ask for an explanation and that you are made aware of ANY changes to these wild rivers immediately.

Expansion of mining and other water extractive industries must not be allowed if they alter our natural environment in a manner that WILL have a cumulative and singular impact. Surely the health of our river systems, our Basins is more important than government's and mining companies and irrigators rush to make more dollars.

We are talking yet again about the Precautionary Principle and the Principle of intergenerational equity as highlighted in the EPBC Act.

As the Minister for the Environment you have the responsibility to ensure that states are adhering to the EPBC Act and international conventions and agreements that Australia has signed up for. Near enough is simply not good enough.

Again, I would also ask that the Commonwealth does not pass the EPBC Act baton to states at the next COAG meeting on this subject. States have vested interest. Prime examples are Queensland and their weakening of environmental laws to allow  so called "cutting of green tape or red tape". Victoria is another state that is on the process of doing the same, as is Western Australia. Handing over the control of EPBC Act to these will have a detrimental effect on matters protected under the act as well as all of Australia because we KNOW that cumulative impacts of single actions on each state will be unacceptable in their intensity.

The Commonwealth has a role to ensure that states do NOT weaken laws that have been. Implemented by the states to ensure their compliance with the EPBC Act. This is exactly what they are doing in preparation of huge huge huge expansion of mining, for minerals for water, expansion of cotton, of other crops that are no sustainable on a continent that has such a shortage of water. Water must be shared in a balanced manner with the environment and not everything is about money!!!

Have a close look at what states are sneakily, without consultation, doing to National parks!!!! Cattle in them, prospecting, thinning or logging, hunting, developments, more roads, mining etc

We need a rethink on what a "National" park is and what they are setup for. It shouldn't be that single activities are approved piecemeal wi strategic assessments!

I also have concerns about the Tarkine and your failure to list the 430,000ha as recommended. An opportunity Minister Burke.

If there will be a change of government later this year perhaps this presents you (at the moment) with an unprecedented opportunity to make decisions that are nation building, such as listing the the entire area of the Tarkine as recommended, as ensuring that the EPBC Act is not passed to the states and rejigging the EPBC Act to include cumulative impacts, stronger strategic assessments, climate change and...

You have a once in a lifetime opportunity, please use it as it was used in the Franklin Dam listing. You can if you have the will. Please, this is about the future of our natural environment which is already degraded and in dire peril from many many fronts.

Regards

Maria Riedl

~~~~~~

Further reading
SA Govt urged to fight  Qld's Wild Rivers change

Overturn , axe and bury:  the LNP and  Queensland's Wild Rivers Act

Wild Rivers and Indigenous economic development in Queensland

Hydraulic Fracturing Can Potentially Contaminate Drinking Water Sources - and, in Australia, the Great Artesian Basin

The indefatigible Water Warrior and Networker, Maria Riedl 

has sent through this document from the Natural Resources Defence Council

Grappling with.... water, the Great Artesian Basin, and the Murray Darling Basin and the forthcoming Plan

The document below has come to me from Peter Smithers via my friend, the indefatigible water campaigner and environmentalist, Maria Reidl. It is wide-ranging and while it looks quite a bit to read, Peter has broken  his snippets up into smaller 'chapters'.  The Murray Darling Basin Plan is due for release in a little over a week, on 28 November.  Things are warming up with predictions that neither irrigators nor environmentalists will be happy.  Last time the irrigators were unhappy they burned copies of the plan in a Nazi-style book-burning in Griffith, NSW.  If they are unhappy this time after a second crack at a plan which has included Tony Windsor's Inquiry, what will they do...what they gonna do....

Great Artesian Basin (GAB) : Coal Seam Gas Extraction: Money in your pocket or water to sustain

Picture from here

Australians are fighting for and over the iconic Murray-Darling Basin at the moment - and who knows when matters will be resolved, if ever.  

There is another icon - and if the MDB gets overlooked in the urbanised east coast fringes (note, Adelaide, that I did not include you. I know you are interested in the MDB.) then take on board the abysmal ignorance of urban Australia about the wonder-ful Great Artesian Basin (GAB) - Australia's system and store of antique, not readily renewable, water under our feet in three states and one territory (see map above).

Good on Greens Senator-elect Larissa Waters for drawing attention to the dangers that are faced because of coal seam gas extraction.  I hesitate to do this because already I don't have enough hours in one day - but I am setting this post up as a Post of Record.  I probably should have done this before- but I will post links regarding coal seam extraction here.  The disastrous affects of CSG extraction are not only an Australian phenomenon - they stretch across the globe.  

So, Networkers, please forward appropriate material.  If any of you are keen bloggers and want to come to my aid on this matter and help me manage the Post of Record and help me research stuff, please put your hand up.  Many hands make light blogging - and at the moment it is pretty full on and heavy!  

I believe a gram of information in community hands is worth a tonne of locked-up government files - so let's get going and make this belief a reality, please.  See below for the start I have made.

International Organisations mobilising around CSG

United States of America

Switchboard - Natural Resources Defense Council Staff blog

Earthworks

Oil and Gas Accountability Project

Arkansans for Gas Drilling Accountability

Binghamton Regional Sustainability Coalition

Catskill Mountainkeeper

Clean Water Action

Dallas Area Residents for Responsible Drilling

Damascus Citizens for Sustainability

Delaware Riverkeeper Network

Downwinders at Risk

Environmental Working Group

Fort Worth CAN DO

Native action

Northeast Ohio Gas Accountability Project

PA Forest Coalition

Park Foundation

PennEnvironment

Pennsylvania Alliance for Clean Air and Water

People for a Healthy Environment

Powder River Basin Resource Council

San Juan Citizens Alliance

Texas Oil and Gas Accountability Project

Western Organization of Resource Councils

West Virginia Surface Owners' Rights Organization

Wyoming Outdoor Council

(to be continued)

Organisations mobilising around CSG in Australia
National
Friends of the Earth Australia

New South Wales

Caroona Coal Action Group

Rivers SOS

Liverpool Plains Land Management Committee
Hunter-Bulga Gas Action Group

Queensland
Six Degrees Coal and Climate Campaign

Bimblebox Nature Refuge
Coal for Breakfast (Haystack Plains)
Friends of Felton
Bowen Residents Action Association
Future Foods
Mackay Conservation
Western Downs Alliance
Basin Sustainability Alliance

Documents

Further reading:
Forcing gas out of rock with water - National Geographic
Tara residents blockade Qld gas company to stop seismic testing
Lee cattle empire near Roma  under threat from coal seam gas project
Energy crops may soak up methane water
Powder River Basin
Rasslin' swamp gas

Related articles

• Coal-seam gas projects approved (theage.com.au)
• PREVIEW-Australia to approve $30 bln coal seam gas projects (reuters.com)
• Miners' water rights changes won't work (news.theage.com.au)
• Risk to GAB too big for gas go-ahead (news.theage.com.au)
• BG, Santos LNG Developments Win Australia's Approval (businessweek.com)
• NY coal seam gas verdict inspires greens (news.theage.com.au)
• Coal seam gas research deal (news.theage.com.au)
• UPDATE 1-Australia to keep to coal seam gas approval timelines (reuters.com)
• Gas is powering ahead of science: farmers (news.theage.com.au)
• Qld govt to ban BTEX chemicals (news.theage.com.au)

The Great Artesian Basin and Jeff Austin get a gong

The Great Artesian Basin. The envelopes marked in red represent regional clusters of springs called ‘super-groups’. The dark yellow represents the major areas of outcropping sediment where the basin is recharged by rainfall, and the arrows broadly represent the direction of groundwater flow.

From here.

Australia is a big country and it does the out of sight/out of mind trick very well.  The Outback can be a forgotten place, another country in the affairs of State and Commonwealth Governments.  In watching over Australia's precious water (Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth), most of the visibility goes to the Murray-Darling Basin.  Sure, the MDB involves four states but the GAB involves three.

It is therefore pleasing that, in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours List, has received a gong from Her Maj.

Medal of the Order of Australia

Mr Jeffrey John AUSTIN RFD, 

Walgett NSW 2832

For service to water management and conservation, and to the community.

Chairman, Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee, since 2004.

Member and Deputy Chair, Great Artesian Basin Consultative Committee, 1997-2002.

Chairman, NSW Great Artesian Basin Advisory Committee, 1999-2004; Member, since 1997.

Current Deputy Chairman, Namoi Catchment Management Authority; Member, Risk and Audit Committee.

Former Chairman, Groundwater, Regulated and Unregulated Water Committees in the Namoi Valley.

Former Member, North-West Catchment Management Committee.

An Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia representative on the Local Government and Shires Associations Water Resources Committee, for a number of years.

Secretary, Walgett Aero Club, for the past 5 years.

Controller, NSW State Emergency Services and concurrent local government Emergency Management Officer, 1982-1999.

Director, Walgett Special One (Grain) Co-operative, for 8 years.

Chief Engineer, Walgett Shire Council, for approximately 22 years.

Awards/recognition include:

Reserve Force Decoration, long service award presented to officers in the Reserve elements of the Australian Defence Force.

Congratulations, Jeff and all the team 

working to support and care for

The Great Artesian Basin.

I hope you celebrate with a drop of 

Vintage Bore Water.

Related Reading and Viewing:
http://www.environment.gov.au/water/publications/agriculture/video-great-artesian-basin.html

The Great Australian Artesian Basin and the Source of Its Water
Regions of Australia: Great Artesian Basin, Lake Eyre Basin, Murray-Darling Basin, List of Regions of Australia, Eastern States of Australia

Ranking spring wetlands in the Great Artesian Basin of Australia using endemicity and isolation of plant species [An article from: Biological Conservation]
Geology of Australia: Great Artesian Basin, Geology of Tasmania, Geology of the Australian Capital Territory, Seaham, New South Wales, Gondwana
The hydrology of portion of the Great Artesian Basin near the Peake and Denison Ranges (Geological Survey of South Australia. Report of investigation)
The great Australian artesian basin and the source of its water.

Groundwater: Aquifer, Water pollution, Saltwater intrusion, Groundwater recharge, Water table, Hydrogeology, Artesian aquifer, Watertable control, Surface water, Great Artesian Basin
Gas and oil prospects of the Great Artesian Basin: Paleozoic and Mesozoic possibilities are good over vast areas of east-central Australia