16 August 2011
I am sending this message to all my email contacts in the hope that you will read it and perhaps be inspired to help us and others affected by the current scramble by mining companies to extract fossil-fuels under farms, residential land, and areas of national heritage value throughout Australia. Even if you are not personally affected by mining, you no doubt eat food produced by Australian farmers, some of whom are potentially going to lose their farms and their water to coal and coal-seam gas mining. Precious farm land, underground water resources and sensitive natural ecosystems are being lost forever because of rampant mining and state greed.
You may already know that our farm, like so many other farms and rural communities across the country, is threatened by coal mining. Centennial Coal (a mining company owned by Thai company, Banpu) has an exploration licence (cosily named the ‘Inglenook’ project; see: www.centennialcoal.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=37&Itemid=165) over a large tract of land in our area, of which our farm forms a small part.
I can’t begin to tell you how devastated I feel about the prospect of coal mining in this area. The feeling of grief, loss and powerlessness is overwhelming. It not just grief about the potential loss and destruction of our farm, our neighbourhood, of the precious underground water we all rely on in this area; and horror at the potential pollution of air, water and land by future mining activities. It is a grief for future generations: for all the humans, animals and plants living on this land into the future. What kind of landscape will be left for them? A once beautiful, once productive land that has been poisoned and pillaged; vastly reduced or permanently polluted underground water; land that is scarred with the remains of open-cut mining activity; subsidence of land above underground mines; ruined ecosystems.
Just as a small example of the implications for us of Centennial’s exploration licence; over the last fortnight, as part of the company’s ongoing exploration work, a helicopter has flown in a linear pattern over our property at intervals of approximately 20 metres, and at a height just above the level of the tallest trees (by my approximation 30 to 40 metres). For two full days, and again just after 9 am last Sunday, the helicopter flew over our farm, crossing the area directly over our house perhaps a dozen times over this period in order to collect data for their proposed mining operation. You have to wonder whether this incredible invasion of privacy could happen over the homes of coal company executives… Remember too that this is only the exploration phase. If so little consideration is shown us in this phase, what will it be like if and when they begin to mine?
Whether you are personally affected by the resources boom – and I know that many people are, even in inner-city Sydney there is a proposed coal-seam gas mine – you now know of someone who is personally affected. But as I said before, my grief about this is not just for myself and my family, and our potential loss of a most beautiful natural environment and a farm and that has been our family home for five generations, it’s about a catastrophe on an enormous scale that is going to affect us all, our children, and the generations to follow us. And it does not, and will not, only affect humans. It will affect all life on this continent: humans, animals and plants.
What can you do? Well you could attend the next Lock the Gate Alliance rally: Stop Coal Seam Gas Drilling in Sydney! on Sunday 18 September 2011, 11:00 am at Camperdown Memorial Park, Corner Lennox & Eliza Sts, Newtown, Sydney.
If you can’t make it to that rally, you can check the Lock the Gate website for details of other events (lockthegate.org.au) or visit the Running Stream Water Users Association blog to find out the latest news in my area (runningstream2850.blogspot.com).
You can write to your local politicians, join any other protests that take place (find out about them at the addresses given above), and lock your own gate against the multinationals if your land is being similarly affected by mining (an act endorsed by Tony Abbott!).
You could also make a submission to the National Food Plan by 2nd September. This is an important opportunity to get the message to the government that the rapid, unplanned expansion of mining is threatening our food producing areas and water resources: www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/food/national-food-plan.
It may feel like a David and Goliath fight: what can individuals do in the face of these powerful, cashed-up companies and governments that are only too willing to sell off our fossil fuels and our futures for the relatively small amounts of money and very limited employment opportunities for Australians that the resources companies are offering? But if there are many voices, many people willing to show that they care, I think we can stop mining in valuable farming, residential and other sensitive areas before it’s too late.
Fiona Sim (Member of Running Stream Water Users Association)
Posted for Fiona
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