By Dominic Geiger

Environmentalists say coal mines are no longer practical. Image: Iain Thompson.

A new coal mine planned for north of Maryborough in Queensland has recently received significant financial backing from a Chinese company, frustrating environmentalists in their struggle to prevent the operation going ahead.

Executive Director of the Queensland Conservation Council, Toby Hutcheon, says the coal mines will have a large negative environmental impact.

“The major issue obviously with coal mines is that the use of the coal is very emission intense. Any expansion of a coal mine- any increase in the export and use of that coal- will actually increase global greenhouse gas emissions.”

Roger Curry of the White Bay Burnett Conservation Council says the mine might not be exactly what it seems.

“We are particularly concerned about this proposal. Even though Northern Energy Corporation (NEC) is currently looking into a very small footprint pre-emptive project of 500 000 tonnes a year, it actually sits within a large coke and coal deposit called the Borough syncline which is approximately 50 000 hectares in size,” he says.

“[NEC] believes that there is 100 million tonnes of potential resource there, so we are concerned that this current proposal could be simply a small approval process to try and then have the ability to move into a large scale extraction of the 100 million tonnes.”

Keith Barker, managing director of NEC , says this isn’t the case.

“We’re looking at, on the scale of coal mining, a very small mine. The assessments of the environmental impacts are that they will not impact on anywhere apart from within the mining leash area. Part of our approval process is to do our environmental management plan.

Barker says the mine will have considerable benefits for both the local community and the state as a whole.

“There’ll be benefits through Queensland; the direct impact on the Maryborough region in terms of wages and direct services within the mine region is about 20 million dollars. In addition there will be export revenue from the sale of the coal, which will be from the order of $100 plus million a year, [and] royalties to the state government through things like rail and other services.”

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But according to Curry, the mine could cause significant harm to the local environment.

He says that the project is located close to the Great Sand Ramsar which could potentially create federal and state debate about biodiversity in the area.

There is also concern for the community as the mine is fairly close to the township.

“Given that the Queensland Government is pretty keen on coal as the way to save Queensland’s economy, we’re really up against it, but we will definitely put our biggest effort into ensuring that the biodiversity issues are well discussed.”

Hutcheon, however, says the building of new coal mines is altogether no longer feasible in a world affected by global warming.

“We are essentially living in an age where we have to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That essentially means for the coal industry that we have to start to use less coal and use more of the alternatives particularly renewable energies,” he says.

“That is the reality of the times that we live in, so any expansion of coal mine [and] any increase in exports of coal will increase greenhouse gas emissions. That, we do not support.”

Dominic Geiger is a producer for The Wire.