The Running Stream Water Users Association (RSWUA) has called on the State Government to consider food and water security in developing a state-wide strategy on coal and coal seam gas mining.
In its submission on the scoping paper for the draft strategy, the RSWUA said food and water security had been highlighted by thinking people as the major concerns of the 21st Century.
“The paper implies that the only land that might be considered for ‘quarantining’ is land that is currently used intensively and/or is very productive,” RSWUA president Jolieske Lips wrote in the group’s submission.
“Surely the opposite approach should be taken as we plan for the decades ahead and thus protect all food producing land, no matter how it is currently being used?
“If we are going to future- proof our food security we need to err on the side of caution.
“With an increasing population and urban expansion obliterating market gardens, future generations will require more not less agricultural land.”
Ms Lips said the recent experience of the Hunter Valley showed that co-existence of agriculture and mining was a myth.
“Sure, small scale underground mining and scattered, open cut can and until recently have co-existed. However, the Hunter Valley experience shows the cumulative impact is devastating on agriculture.”
Ms Lips said to date the State Government had not showed any commitment to preserving water resources, citing the destruction of Woronora Cree, and the deterioration of Woronora Dam and the drying up of the five Thirlmere Lakes in the World Heritage Blue Mountains National Parks as a result of longwall mines.
“In our own area of Running Stream, we are currently battling to have a comprehensive water study done before coal exploration begins,” the submission said.
“Here we have rich basalt farmland with a significant water resource from springs which will be affected by mining.
The RSWUA submission also criticised the scoping paper for bias towards coal development over renewable energy.
Ms Lips said the strategic approach seemed to be that of a global economy: “Sell coal and import food”.
“This bias is further confirmed by another staff comment: ‘If there is a resource we will mine it’.”
The RSWUA has called for a full cost/benefit analysis for all mines, not just “key areas”.
The analysis should be transparent and include all environmental impacts, health costs, and effects on the community such as increased housing costs, road costs, and costs to businesses of skills shortages, the RSWUA says.
The group wants changes to the exploration licence process so that landholders are notified before mining titles are granted, and to include water as a compensable loss.
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