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Environmental Impact of Coal Mining on the Liverpool Plains of New South Wales
In April 2006 the NSW Government announced the award of a four year coal exploration lease (EL 6505) in the Gunnedah Basin to BHP Billiton. Test bore drilling commenced in July of that year. For a decade the exploratory and analytical 'blueprint' produced by the Coal and Petroleum Branch of the Department of Mineral Resources sat on the shelf awaiting the right economic and political conditions.
That time has now come. The prospect of billions in revenue from the export and domestic consumption of huge quantities of high grade bituminous coal is too much for the Government and the mining company to resist. It is now clear that the Liverpool Plains are to become the new 'Hunter Valley' and revenue engine for a troubled NSW economy. However, the planned coal mining and exploitation development promises to severely impact some of the most beautiful and fertile, yet environmentally fragile, agricultural country in NSW.
Current concerns include:
- cracking of aquitards and loss of aquifers
- degradation and deepening of ground water supplies
- increased salinity in surface and ground water
- loss of world-class arable land to surface or underground mining operations
- loss of ground relief used or developed by irrigators and broadacre farmers
- loss of surface water and ground water to coal mining and coal exploitation operations
- inducement of seismicity by mining operations
- loss of hundreds of millions in property values
- gas emissions such as sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen sulphide, etc.
- air and rain water tank pollution
- acid rain and acid rock drainage
- respiratory diseases and toxic fallout
- heavy metal contamination of above and below ground water supplies
- increased erosion
- increased nutrient flow and algal blooms
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Coal Mining the Liverpool Plains [PDF report 18Mb ]
A review of coal mining in NSW
A short review of coal's toxicity
The potential role of mining in the 1989 Newcastle Earthquake by Christian Klose
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