Employing some 150,000 people, Shenhua Group is a leading Chinese state owned mining and energy company.
In October 2008, Shenhua Australia Holdings Pty Limited and Shenhua Watermark Coal Pty Limited were registered in Australia in October 2008 as subsidiaries of Shenhua Overseas Development & Investment Co., Ltd, which serves as a global vehicle for outbound investment and project development on behalf of Shenhua Group. In that same month, Shenhua Watermark Coal Pty Ltd (Shenhua Watermark) was granted Exploration Licence (EL) 7223 by the New South Wales (NSW) Minister for Mineral Resources.
The Project
The company describes the project in this way.
“The Project is located approximately 25 km south-east of the township of Gunnedah and 3km to the west of the village of Breeza. The Project is approximately 282 km by rail from the Port of Newcastle.
The Project generally comprises:
- The construction and operation of an open cut coal mining operation extracting up to 10 Million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) of Run of Mine (ROM) coal for a 30 year period;
- The utilisation of an open cut mining fleet of excavators and rope shovels, supported by haul trucks, dozers, graders, blast hole drills and water carts;
- Progressive rehabilitation of all disturbed areas;
- The construction and operation of:
o Coal Handling and Preparation Plant to process the raw coal;
o Administration building, workshop and related facilities;
o Train loadout, rail spur and loop to connect to the rail line to Newcastle;
o Mine Access Road off the Kamilaroi Highway including an overpass of the
rail spur;
o Water management and reticulation infrastructure; and
o Communications and electricity infrastructure. - A workforce of up to 600 full-time equivalent employees during construction and an average of 434 full-time equivalent employees during the operation of the Project.”
So it’s not a small project.
The Problem
Aeons ago, sentiments were deposited in a shallow sea stretching up from the Sydney Basin up into Queensland in a geological event called by geologists the Hunter-Bowen orogeny. The end result was huge coal deposits.
The deposits under the Liverpool Plains form the northern extension of what would become known as the Northern Districts coal fields. These coal fields are important in historical terms for, until quite recently, the Northern Districts dominated Australian coal production. Coal production around While coal production around Gunnedah was relatively minor compared to the lower Hunter, it has been a significant feature of the local economy.
The combination of large coal deposits and rich agricultural land set the scene for a major battle spearheaded by Tim Duddy and the Caroona Coal Action Group between locals and environmental groups and the Watermark coal development.
This is just one of the environmental battles that I have talked about raging across the broader New England, battles that together form what I have called New England’s environmental wars.
Recent Developments
Last week the Watermark development was approved by the NSW Government’s planning processes. Federal environmental approval has still to be obtained. Now the stage has been set for a new battle. I will look at this later in the week in my second post in this background briefing.
4 comments:
Oh dear. That is where I did some of my undergraduate Honours study. It was only relating to coal and gas geology !!!! Last time I moved I threw out all my honours notes since I know that I'll probably never need them again.
Good lord, Rod, and just when we need them!
As a working hypothesis I would state mining does far less environmental damage than does agriculture.
While the environmental costs of mining have been estimated and tallied repeatedly,agriculture has been very fortunate in that it has escaped any detailed scrutiny of its environmental costs.
In my excursions in the field in the Top End of the NT ,southern part of the Gulf Country and areas west of the Darling,there were many so-called agriculturists who should not have allowed within 100km of a patch of dirt.
How come you are required to obtain a permit for just about anything ,but not to what could be in effect -"mining " the soil.
To illustrate :In the mid-1960's I attended a lecture in Canberra given by a rural sociologist from the Queensland Department of Agriculture on why wheat yields were low in an area of the Darling Downs.When he went out to the area and observed the farmers at work and play ,to his amazement he found one farmer was not employing contour plowing .Instead he was ploughing up and down the hill.(I learned about contour plowing and its relation to soil erosion in a lesson on soil erosion at the Armidale Demonstration School in the late 1940's .)
And another farmer thought the top soil was 2m deep when in actual fact it was a matter of centimetres.Did he never dig a pit?
And more:One night in one of the Tiboburra pubs(there were two at that time)a young grazier tried to tell me that overgrazing did not matter because the "pick" -the country- would came back once it rained.Fortunately for me the regional soil conservatioist was in the bar at that time .Later the soil conservatioist told me that when the young grazier had taken up the lease there were five eathern dams ,now there were three.Two had silted up.
That trip was also instructive in seeing the damage that sheep did to the vegetation and soil on the NSW side of the boundary fence compared to markedly far less damage cattle did on the Queensland side.
A friend who was a soil conservationist on the Emerald project in Queensland was told by one of the farmers that "he was going to make his money by flogging the land to death" .
An approach taken by at least one cattleman on the Barley Tablelands in recent memory and by Lord Vestes in the distant past.
N.C.W.Bealde ,who was professor of Botany UNE,wrote in 1949 or thereabouts,based on of his study of the soils and soil erosion that there should be no grazing west of the Darling . There has been continuous grazing ever since,and the grazing properties continue to be uneconomic.
Meanwhile the saltbush deceases and the scalds become larger.
Agriculture is not benign.It may be idyllic and conjure up visions of the bronzed Anzac but it is not benign .
What an interesting comment. I totally agree with you about mining the soil and that ag can be worse than mining. I am a little younger than you, but I read a book in the Dem library - for the life of me I cannot the name nor have I been able to find it since - about a farmer who turned his place around via contour ploughing, erosion control and better water management. It was a kids book.
One of the things that I have looked at in my research on the history of the broader New England (Tablelands and the surrounding river valleys to the north, south, west and east) is the emergence of new farming practices with people like White from Bald Blair. There was a whole group of them who were conscious of the importance of soil etc very early. And I do remember Noel Beadle quite well. He was a friend of my father.
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