‘Barbaric': Adani's giant coal mine granted unlimited water licence for 60 years

The proposed Adani coal mine, which will be Australia's biggest, has been granted unlimited access to groundwater by the Queensland government in a move farmers fear will drain huge amounts of water from the Great Artesian Basin.

Nine coal mines are planned for Queensland's Galilee Basin.

According to a copy of Adani's water licence signed last Wednesday and obtained by Fairfax Media, the $16 billion Carmichael mine merely needs to monitor and report the amount of water it extracts under a permit that runs until 2077.

The mine – one of nine proposed for the Galilee Basin west of Rockhampton – can conduct its own review of its groundwater model without independent or government oversight.

There are also no impact levels specified that will trigger a halt to mining, and the company is able to offset any significant water loss elsewhere, the licence shows.

Read the story from The Sydney Morning Herald by Peter Hannam - “‘Barbaric': Adani's giant coal mine granted unlimited water licence for 60 years.”

What happens to small towns whose water becomes big business for bottled brands?

Groundwater being pumped from a highland aquifer, only to be whisked away in tankers and sold in little plastic bottles by a multinational corporation – it’s a difficult concept for a small farming town to swallow.

The more the market is willing to pay, the harder it is to regulate water use.

Just ask the residents of Stanley, Victoria, whose four-year court battle to stop a farmer bottling local groundwater for Japanese beverage giant Asahi ended in failure last month. They were left with a A$90,000 bill for legal costs.

Locals have clashed with the bottled water industry in many parts of the world, including the United States and Canada, and perhaps most famously in the French spa town of Vittel, where residents have accused Nestlé of selling so much of their water to the rest of the world that they barely have enough left for themselves.

Read the report from The Conversation - “What happens to small towns whose water becomes big business for bottled brands?”

Farmers join fight against Adani coalmine over environmental concerns

A group of Australian farmers have joined the large coalition of groups fighting against Adani’s giant Carmichael coalmine, after they became concerned about the affects the mine would have on groundwater, biodiversity, rural communities and climate change.

 Longreach farmer Angus Emmott launched a petition
 calling on the Queensland government to rescind its
 commitment to give Adani unlimited free access
to groundwater used by farmers.

Farmers for Climate Action – a group of more than 2,000 farmers and agriculture leaders concerned about climate change – became the newest group to join the Stop Adani alliance last week, at the same time as one of its members attracted more than 30,000 signatures to a petition calling on the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, to rescind her commitment to give Adani unlimited free access to groundwater used by farmers in the region.

Longreach farmer Angus Emmott launched the petition last week; a few days later he had an accident on his farm and had to be airlifted to hospital. When he checked on the number of signatures on Wednesday, he was shocked to see there were nearly 30,000.

Read Michael Slezak’s story on The Guardian - “Farmers join fight against Adani coalmine over environmental concerns.”

High and dry': Adani seeks additional surface water to feed giant coal mine

The scale of water demand from Adani's giant coal mine in Queensland appears to be larger than expected, as the company seeks approval for a large, additional flood-harvesting dam.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk
meets Indian billionaire Gautam Adani
 in Townsville last December. 

As Fairfax Media revealed, the company's proposed Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin was last week controversially granted uncapped access to the groundwater in a licence that expired in 2077. 

However, just how much surface water the mine will need remains unclear. Its "external water demand ... is in the order of 12 gigalitres a year", according to its supplementary environmental impact statement (SEIS).

Documents obtained under freedom of information, however, suggest the thirst for water at what would be Australia's biggest coal mine may be even larger.

Read Peter Hannam story in today’s Melbourne Age - “‘High and dry': Adani seeks additional surface water to feed giant coal mine.”

‘Barbaric': Farmers rattled as Adani coal mine granted unlimited water access

The proposed Adani coal mine has been granted unlimited access to groundwater by the Queensland government in a move farmers fear would allow it to drain huge amounts of water from the Great Artesian Basin.

Adani's giant coal mine in the Galilee
 Basin aims to export mainly to India. 

According to a copy of Adani's water licence obtained by Fairfax Media, the $16 billion Carmichael mine merely needs to monitor and report the amount of water it extracts with a permit that runs until 2077.

The mine, the biggest of nine proposed for the Galilee Basin west of Rockhampton, can conduct its own review of its groundwater model without independent or government oversight. 

There are also no impact levels specified that would trigger a halt to mining, with the company able to offset any significant water loss elsewhere, the licence shows.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in The Sydney Morning Herald - “‘Barbaric': Farmers rattled as Adani coal mine granted unlimited water access.”

(Groundwater is ancient and finite and so it is blatantly irresponsible to hand such an open ended licence to access and use this valuable resource to an Indian company that has altruistic interest in the longterm welfare of the Australian community. It’s time Turnbull and his coalition cohort stepped up and stopped this frivolous waste of our rarest commodity - Robert McLean)

Acland coal mine: Closing submissions as farmers fear groundwater loss

The expansion of the Acland coal mine puts groundwater in one of Queensland's most fertile regions at risk, farmers have said, ahead of closing submissions in their Land Court battle.

The Oakey Coal Action Alliance has spent the last seven months fighting stage three of New Hope's mine.

Opponents claim air quality will worsen and the expansion would swallow up nearly 1,400 hectares of strategic cropping land and cause groundwater to drop by almost 50 metres in some places.

The mine, west of Brisbane, is said to run out of coal early next year and unless stage three is approved, hundreds of jobs will be lost.

Read the ABC story - “Acland coal mine: Closing submissions as farmers fear groundwater loss.”

How will CSG extraction affect groundwater in the next 50 years?

A landholder representative group has welcomed the results of a new Government report that predicts the impact of the Coal Seam Gas industry on groundwater reserves in Coal Seam Gas through to 2065.

Read the story at Beef Central.

 

Ancient water being depleted quickly, climate change slowing recharge

A

n alarming satellite-based analysis from NASA finds that the world is depleting groundwater — the water stored underground in soil and aquifers — at an unprecedented rate.

A new Nature Climate Change piece, “The global groundwater crisis,” by James Famiglietti, a leading hydrologist at the NASA Jet PropulsionLaboratory, warns that “most of the major aquifers in the world’s arid and semi-arid zones, that is, in the dry parts of the world that rely most heavily on groundwater, are experiencing rapid rates of groundwater depletion.”

The groundwater at some of the world’s largest aquifers — in the U.S. High Plains, California’s Central Valley, China, India, and elsewhere — is being pumped out “at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished.”

Read the ClimateProgress story - “NASA Bombshell: Global Groundwater Crisis Threatens Our Food Supplies And Our Security.”

(The world’s “ancient water” – our aquifers – that took centuries to fill, are being depleted in just decades and everywhere they are dropping by metres)

Eastern lows and snowfalls disguise difficulties in California

Given the historic low temperatures and snowfalls that pummeled the eastern U.S. this winter, it might be easy to overlook how devastating California's winter was as well.

An Op-Ed by Jay Famiglietti published in the Los Angeles Times warns that California’s water supplies are drying up.

He writes, “As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions.

“January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows.

“We're not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we're losing the creek too,” he says.

His story - “California has about one year of water left. Will you ration now?” – says, “Statewide, we've been dropping more than 12 million acre-feet of total water yearly since 2011. Roughly two-thirds of these losses are attributable to groundwater pumping for agricultural irrigation in the Central Valley.”