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

Unethical mining corporations? Take a look at FreeportMcMorRan and Barrick Gold.

Australian miners overseas are no angels.

Think polluted watercourses, damaged food lands.

Think the Australia-Timor Leste martime boundary. 

Australian miner wants to mine close to a world heritage site.

No mining in Lower Zambezi National Park.

However, North America seems to provide a particularly nasty brood of miners.  Think Freeport McMoRan in West Papua/Irian Jaya.  And think this doozie of Barrick Gold's irresponsibility on the other side of the border in Porgera, Papua New Guinea.  Clearly, Barrick has ways and means of achieving its published goals of disciplined, profitable production.

Huffington Post has done us a great service.  It has compiled a list of thirteen corporations who are the most unethical in the whole wide world. And you will find a surprise - well, no surprise actually - in who came in No.1 --- and it wasn't a mining corporation!

Clearly, the governments on our planet

are doing a poor job of keeping corporations honest and ethical.

Just send these major corporations abroad

and you will lose friends and fail to influence the locals -

but then my guess is that there are handouts

to governments and other international influencers, aren't there?

Canadian mining companies the worst...

Senator Scott Ludlam questions operations of Australian mining companies overseas

The Great Barrier Reef - God's great gift to this nation - has been made open season for developers & greedy money bags. Blasphemy!

Picture from here

I grew up in Bowen, married there, had my first child there.

When I married my husband, Joe Walsh,

my mother said I married half of Bowen - and I probably did.

So I lived beside the Great Barrier Reef at the top end

of the beautiful Whitsunday Islands.

It now appears that I live in a nation where vandals and visigoths

make impacting decisions with impunity.

We need the names of those who are allowing dangerous projects

which will impact on the reef.

We need thee names never to be forgotten.

When this sort of thing befalls our beloved Great Barrief Reef, 

we need to carve this names with disgust

on memorial boards along the communities of The Reef.

- Brigid Walsh aka Miss Eagle

~~~~~~~

If you were responsible for the future of one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, would you

• allow new mega ports to be built alongside it, including the largest coal port in the world?


• turn it into a shipping superhighway?


• allow millions of tonnes of dredging and then dump the spoil on its doorstep?

No, neither would I, but I was shocked to hear this is exactly what our political leaders (Federal and Queensland) are doing to the Great Barrier Reef. 
Bloody Idiots, I reckon.
If you agree with me, please share this message - for we shall surely have a long fight to stop this madness. And so we will need all the good and sensible people to join us in this fight.

I've just joined the Fight for the Reef... will you?
The rapid increase in developments planned in and around the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area means the future of the Reef is in danger.

There are a whole bunch of projects in the pipeline and if we don't do something about it now, our Reef and the lifestyle we love could be changed forever.

Will you join the fight today? Go to http://fightforthereef.org.au

Denis Wilson
"All conservation monitoring programs should contain well-defined trigger points for pre-planned action". Otherwise the "recovery plans for threatened species" are meaningless.

"The Nature of Robertson"
www.peonyden.blogspot.com.au

Ranger, your time is up NOW!

The article below is from Tracker

The picture below is from here

Debate warming up over Ranger mine future

BY TRACKER, SEPTEMBER 20, 2013

NORTHERN TERRITORY: The operators of the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory have unveiled a new water processing machine they say will give it a future beyond 2021.

But not everyone’s happy.

Mining has been completed at the site, which is located within – but is not a part of – the world heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, 260km southeast of Darwin.

It’s operated by Energy Resources Australia (ERA), which is owned by Rio Tinto.

The $220 million brine concentrator unveiled on Thursday will improve the mine’s ability to treat water and to progressively rehabilitate the site by 2026, when it must be of a standard to be reintegrated to Kakadu.

Traditional owners and environmental groups want to see ERA exit in 2021.

But if a second project currently in exploration turns out to be feasible, the brine concentrator may help them stay on if the relevant parties can be convinced it’s possible to mine in an environmentally safe way.

ERA’s chief executive Rob Atkinson says it’s too early to talk about future negotiations with stakeholders and the local community.

But he notes that previous attempts to treat water to a high standard were either too small for requirements or unsuccessful.

“This is the first time in ERA’s history producing very clean water at the quality we need,” he says.

“Without the brine concentrator I don’t believe we would have a future here at all.”

The brine concentrator took five years to be delivered from its conception, and has an output of 1.8 billion litres per year, or 800 Olympic pools of water free of radioactive contamination.

Managing water is at the heart of the mine’s considerations in the Top End, which experiences monsoonal rain for months on end every year, says operations manager Tim Eckersley.

“When you consider where we operate, the extremes of weather we experience, managing water is a critical component of operations,” he says.

In 2011, the mine had to shut down production for six months because of extensively contaminated water, says Justin O’Brien, CEO of the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation (GAC) which manages mining royalties on behalf of the Mirarr people, the traditional owners of the land who opposed the mine’s development in 1978.

“With billions of (contaminated) litres sitting here and an Aboriginal community six kilometres downstream, that alarmed us,” he tells AAP.

The GAC sees the brine concentrator as a positive step towards keeping the water safe and clean, as does the Australian Conservation Foundation, calling it “overdue but welcome”.

“We don’t see (the brine concentrator) as meaning it will be okay for them to now dig a new underground mine at Ranger,” spokesman Dave Sweeney says.

“It’s technically feasible (they could continue mining after 2021), yes they could probably do it, but there’s these other factors that pose the question: is it really worth it?

“Are you prepared to own the consequent problems should you decide to go there?”

Although the Ranger mine is now only processing stockpiled ore as its open pits are slowly being backfilled, exploration for a possible underground mine is underway at a neighbouring site named Ranger 3 Deeps. If feasible, mining could begin in 2015, but would only be able to operate for five years under the current lease agreement.

Chief Minister Adam Giles, who is keen to see more mining in the NT, says Ranger was one of the most heavily regulated mines in the world.

“They put a lot of investment into environmental sustainability, as well as having the cultural obligations to be able to provide support for traditional owners, as well as seeking economic advancement,” he says.

But Mr O’Brien says traditional owners of the land want ERA to stick to the 2021 deadline.

“It’s never crossed our mind that they would mine beyond 2021,” he says. “They would need to be very persuasive and bring other things to the table were we to consider a new mining (permission), which is ultimately not our decision but that of the federal government.”

Since the Fukushima disaster of 2011 the uranium market has bottomed out, with prices dropping about 50 per cent, and it’s this that the Australian Conservation Foundation hopes will convince ERA’s owners Rio Tinto not to seek an extension should Ranger 3 Deeps prove viable beyond 2021.

“The only thing ERA do is mine uranium in Kakadu; (they’re) one of Kakadu’s endangered species,” Sweeney says.

But Rio Tinto may decide to walk away from the project at its mandated deadline.

“They will be acutely aware that they will be judged long into the future on how they exit Kakadu,” Sweeney says.

“If they cut corners, costs, and leave it a mess, that will hang over them and affect market access, other stakeholders’ confidence in the company, and future projects.”

But as the wet season looms and the brine concentrator begins churning out clean water, ERA insists it is only looking to 2021.

AAP

Marine parks, marine people, and world heritage: how people can be ignored in conservation practice

The Centre for Policy Development (CPD) has to-day published a document by CPD fellow and former Work Bank economist Caroline Hoisington titled Insuring Australia's Marine Future.  I have embedded the document in this post for easy reading or downloading.

The document makes the case for marine protection.  Hoisington posits that Australia's national network of marine parks will act as an insurance policy for commercial and recreational fishing.  I support this concept - in principle.  I have grave reservations about practice based on what I saw happen in my neighbourhood in relation to the World Heritage listed Wet Tropics in Queensland.

The Bluewater Ranges between Townsville and Ingham

It is all very well to provide legislation to protect. But this is not a set and forget game. I used to live in a place where, if you went up to the end of my road, the World Heritage Listed Rainforest began .... and was uttlerly neglected. 

Based on my experience, two things must accompany legislation. Local residents must be involved and supportive. In my neighbourhood I felt like my family were the only people who knew of the close-by world heritage area even fifteen years after its declaration. The locals are important because, if something is going wrong and they are supportive and watching over the area, they will be first reporters. The second thing is that management plans for the entire area must be available immediately or almost immediately after declaration. 

The world heritage area near me - after chasing tiny sleeper cutters out on 31 December 1988 - became an area of great weed infestation and the wild pigs and cattle more problematic than they had been previously. There was no management plan for a very, very long time. The Army and the Air Force had facilities in this area but I saw no evidence that they shared an environmental interest in this world heritage area to the extent of hastening a management plan or assisting in management of the area. 

So as someone who lived beside the reef for most of her life, I am supportive of marine parks, I am also sympathetic - based on my experience of living in the shadow of world heritage - with the fishing family in the Gulf who say they have never been consulted and yet they hold extensive knowledge of the Marine Park. 

I am also unsympathetic to the scientist I saw on the same TV program who seemed to be totally reliant on far-away computer modelling and mapping. This may be a major factor in mapping marine areas. It will not, in one iota, keep marine parks in excellent condition. Only co-operative human interest and involvement at the local level under sound management plans can do this.

Further to my comments about the locals being ignorant that they were living in the shadow of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Listed Rainforest, here is an entry for the town of Bluewater.  There is no mention of the close-by Bluewater Ranges and their world significance.  In my view, this is because local people were not consulted nor were they part of the demands for the world heritage listing. Most of that noise happened in the Cairns region.  The local people feel little or no responsibility for the world heritage area.  Whether people there feel a connection to the area is unknown to me. I only know that my family did.  My late husband was a regular visitor to the area. He formed a friendship with one of the sleeper cutters who had a small mill on the banks of Keelbottom Creek.  We valued that area. Whether the sleeper cutters should have gone and the military allowed to stay, I don't know.  The sleeper cutters were a part of the forest heritage too ... but, to some decision makers, people and their social history have little value.

Further reading: Reef faces permanent coal, climate change damage

Threatening the environment with coal operations - Part 2

More from Denis Wilson of The Nature of Robertson:

At least some groups are speaking out against this decision by Tony Burke.

I have to wonder why the Barcaldine Mayor, who says this: We've seen such a mess in the Bowen Basin in places like Blackwater and other places - we've got a blank canvas, we've got a whole new ball game here - would still support this new and larger development. 

Is he naive, stupid or corrupt or any other alternative you can suggest. I just don't get it.

Denis Wilson

Picture from here

Alpha coal mine 'devastating' for reef

By William Rollo

Video: Alpha coal project gets green light (7pm TV News QLD)

Related Story: $7bn Alpha coal mine gets approval

Related Story: Rinehart's $6.4b mine wins conditional approval

Related Story: Newman slams 'rogue' Burke in reef mine spat

Related Story: Mine stoush threatens future projects: councils

Related Story: Burke slams 'shambolic' reef mine approval

Map: Alpha 4724

Environmentalists and farmers have criticised the Federal Government's approval of the Alpha coal and rail project in central Queensland.

Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke has approved the multi-billion dollar project in the Galilee Basin, after four years of negotiations.

The Federal Government took over the responsibility for approving the project in May, saying the Queensland coordinator-general's conditions were inadequate.

The project has now been given the green light.

Peter Anderson from rural lobby group AgForce says landholders' concerns have been ignored.

"We were hoping that the Minister himself or his advisers making the decision would visit landholders and hear their concerns and we're bitterly disappointed that hasn't happened," he said.

"Landholders haven't been consulted and I have personally written to Minister Burke and haven't received a response."

'Shambolic'

Greenpeace says the project could jeopardise the Great Barrier Reef.

Georgina Woods from Greenpeace says the Federal Government criticised the state's handling of the project but the 19 environmental conditions placed on it still do not go far enough.

"It was shambolic then and it's still shambolic now," she said.

"We don't think that either government has given due consideration to the devastating environmental impacts this mine presents."

The North Queensland Conservation Council (NQCC) says approval of the coal development and the rail link to Abbot Point is a sad outcome for the Great Barrier Reef.

NQCC spokeswoman Wendy Tubman says the caveats cannot guarantee the health of the World Heritage area.

"What we see over and over again is a lovely environmental management plan produced and it is worth, to be honest, diddly squat because it just sits on a shelf and no-one takes any notice of it as far as we can see," she said.

Mr Burke says the reef will be protected and the assessment process was rigorous.

The conditions include developing a water quality management program to minimise the effects of run-off and coal dust on the reef.

Jobs

Whitsunday Regional Council Mayor Jenny Whitney says she believes the local tourism industry, which relies on the reef, will not be jeopardised by the mining project.

"I'm quite confident that the federal and state governments, who are the ones with the authority to impose conditions, are looking at our interests and ensuring that we are sustainable for tourism and industry and keeping that in balance," she said.

A western Queensland mayor says massive coal mines being planned in the Galilee Basin may help improve social services in the central west.

Barcaldine Mayor Rob Chandler says Alpha is one of several proposed in the basin and the development may help the community attract a permanent doctor and a paramedic.

He says thousands of jobs will be created.

"They seem to think they'll get the workforce, predominantly from within Australia - I haven't heard of about bringing in overseas workers for the construction phase but it is a lot of bodies on the ground," he said.

"We've seen such a mess in the Bowen Basin in places like Blackwater and other places - we've got a blank canvas, we've got a whole new ball game here."

First posted 10 hours 31 minutes ago

Related articles

• Threatening the environment with coal operations: Abbot Point and Keela Valley; Alpha and Bimblebox
• Rinehart's $6.4 billion coal mine project gets the green light
• Burke approves Alpha mine, attacks Newman
• Burke blasts Newman as project feud heats up
• Burke accuses Qld govt of telling a lie
• Contentious mine gets go-ahead

Killing us - and the Great Barrier Reef - slowly with coal