Sweeping Plains and Mines Can Coexist

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When Dorethea McKellar wrote, “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains”,   she was writing about the Liverpool Plains near Gunnedah in northwestern NSW.  

The locals now call Gunnedah the koala capital of the world.  Koalas even scamper across the main street to climb up and feed on the avenues of well watered gum trees in the town.  

Well watered, because Gunnedah, like the rest of the Namoi Valley, is fed by underground aquifers. 

So, while much of the Murray Darling Basin is drought stricken you can still find healthy fields of sorghum and soybean on the Liverpool plains all fed from these aquifers.

But Doug Ranken, the chairman of the newly formed Caroona Coal Action Group, and many other local farmers, are frightened all of this productivity will be destroyed if BHP Billiton starts coal mining in the area.  

Mr Ranken and many others describe the Liverpool Plains as one of the world’s richest agricultural regions and he insists coal mining must not be permitted unless BHP Billiton can “guarantee there will be no damage to the environment and agriculture”. 

Given the amount of Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) and other funding spent in the Namoi Valley over the last decade to fix the problem -- real or perceived -- this “holier than thou” attitude from the farmers rings a bit hollow. 

Indeed, while I am not sure how bad the salinity problem was, the region did have a problem with over-allocation of groundwater licenses which has only recently been addressed. 

The Caroona Coal Action Group now claims irrigators are operating in, “equilibrium with the delicate landscape of the Liverpool plains.”

Indeed the group claims agriculture is pure, while coal mining is bad with one of their recent reports stressing the link between coal mining and global warming which is described as “the greatest environmental challenge in the 21st Century”.

The group is so adamant that there will be no coal mining they are not letting BHP access to farms to gather data on ground water and the geology of the area. 

A main concern for the farmers is that the heart of the coal exploration area falls within a region called Breeza, which is upstream of Gunnedah and where underground water flow constricts. 

They believe any coal mining will impact adversely on groundwater all the way down the valley and onto the western plains (even the great artesian basin).

If Breeza is indeed the wrong place for a coal mine then the farmer action group would do well to let BHP Billiton gather all the data and demand access to the same.   

By rallying against coal mining on the Liverpool Plains as soon as the exploration license was granted, the farmers have perhaps dealt themselves out of the decision-making process.

There are many places were coal mining and farming co-exist.  

The Caroona group would do well to consider the longer-term needs of the communities it claims to represent.  

While koalas only need gum trees to survive, the most prosperous and vibrant rural and regional communities in Australia are often sustained by mining as well as farming.

Published in The Land

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