Aston not in eye of environmental storm
While BHP Billiton’s Caroona and Shenhua’s Watermark projects have attracted most environmental angst from concernedfarmers, Todd Hannigan believes Maules Creek is out of the line of fire.
“My view is that farmers are focused on gas and the impact of gas on water supply. Coal mining has been in the upper Gunnedah region for over 50 years, and there’s very good data on the impacts of mining on the local area – and it’s localised,” he said. “The significant economic benefits of mining positively impact the local region and Australia.
“We’re fortunate that Whitehaven and Idemitsu have managed their mines very effectively. We don’t see the same levels of concern in our area that you do, for example, on the Liverpool Plains where there’s no history of mining whatsoever, so the local community is probably scared about the potential impact.
“If you look at our actual mining lease area, there is a limited scope for agriculture. There is higher value agriculture to the north and south, with irrigated land and richer soils, but where we’re located the soil is comparatively poor.
“There’s always opposition. I was born and raised in Broken Hill. I know the impacts of living close to a mine. There are always communities around a mine that are concerned about the direct impacts of mining, in particular noise and dust. Clearly we’re addressing that with local communities. We’ve bought up a good portion of land over the mining lease and transport corridor; the impact outside those areas is small.
“Remember that Rio put in planning on this deposit, back in the early 1990s. In 1991 this thing got a mining lease, it’s already been approved. We’ve submitted a revised planning application, under the new regulations and standards, so that we can produce more than the original plan which was 9mtpa.
“The Nationals are clearly focused on the impact and the overlap between farming and mining. I completely agree with what the Nationals are trying to do and that is if you have an area of very high value agricultural land, you do need to question whether that is the right place to put a large open cut mining operation. You have to do the analysis.
“We’re fortunate that that’s not going to impact us. There isn’t a great deal of farming in our direct-impact local area.”
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