SYDNEY, Australia, Nov. 10 -- Between the Great Dividing Range and the Warrambungles south of Tamworth, the Liverpool Plains is one of the most fertile, drought-resistant agricultural regions in the country. Coined the ‘Food Bowl’ of the state, the volcanic soil, regular rainfall and ancient groundwater streams allow farmers to grow at least 40 percent more cereal than the national average, and double the yield of many other crops each year.

The Plains produce much of Australia’s wheat, corn, sunflower, canola, sorghum, barley, chick peas, legumes, cotton and meat, and contribute about $332 million to GDP annually. Tim Duddy, Spokesman of the "Caroona Coal Action Group (CCAG)":http://www.ccag.org.au, said farmers grow enough wheat each year here to bake 365 million loaves of bread, and corn equivalent to 68 million boxes of cornflakes.

But the region is also believed to hold some 300 billion tons of coal. Coal Mines Australia, a subsidiary of BHP Billiton has for nearly five years explored a 344-square-kilometer area of the countryside around Caroona. Now, the mining giant is drafting plans for a mine officials there hope will extract 500 million tons of coal over the next 30 to 50 years. That's double Australia's current annual coal export total, and could be worth $50 billion.

BHP isn't the only company interested in the floodplains. In 2008, China’s largest energy company, Shenhua, paid $300 million to the provincial government to explore farmland and forest. That company is planning an open-cut coal mine for the Watermark area. At the same time, Santos, another company, began surveying the plains and surrounding Liverpool ranges for coal seam methane.

“People are most worried about the destruction of the water systems and the very real potential that the agricultural production of the region will be compromised,” Duddy said. “Certainly, there is not an example in this country, or for that matter around the world, where mining has taken place in areas like ours and farming has continued like ours.”

The Liverpool Plains Land Management Council (LPLMC) argues that a study examining the relationship between coal and water resources should have been conducted before exploration licenses were issued.

“We’re advocating that the proper research is done in the area before decisions are made so that we don’t say ‘Whoops, I wish we hadn’t done that!!'" said David Walker, an officer with the council.

But according to geochemist and Liverpool Plains local John Polglase, some of the damage has already been done. BHP drilled over 300 holes in their exploration and Shenhua next door has drilled “many, many more than that," Polglase said.

“Not all of them are deep but a good number are very deep and we’ve established that there is already contamination and destruction of aquifers,” he said. “This is before mining licenses have even been issued.”




The land is uniquely productive, Polglase said, because of a layer of black clay soil that's been leveled flat by sheet floods over a period of centuries. The soil retains water and holds nutrients well, Polglase said.

“It’s not unique to the Liverpool plains,” he said. "But on the world scene it is rare and this is probably the best instance we have of it in Australia.”

The soil is rich in calcium and magnesium, and it's also electrostatic, he said.

“This soil has a negative charge and the positive charge of water just sticks to it like a little magnet,” Polglase said. “Within half an hour of heavy rainfall, the ground can rise up to 5 inches, it just swells. We call it a self-mulching soil, because not only does it rise, it turns itself over, rejuvenating the surface of the land with essential nutrients from below the continental crust.”

The region also has extensive underground streams. Part of the Upper Namoi catchment, ground and surface water flows from the Plains to feed the Namoi and Barwon rivers, and eventually, the headwaters of the "Murray-Darling Basin":http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:s9-WpLODN2EJ:https://senate.aph.gov.au/submissions/comittees/viewdocument.aspx%3Fid%3Dcc5b9ee0-b110-4734-82fa-3a326c7e6804+liverpool+plains+mining&hl=en&gl=au&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESglqWSoYzOTaUthY-5p11bLczmijUlP6joqW

“Below the black soil, you find there are gravels and courser, permeable materials, and that’s when you get really good aquifers, which are basically old river beds, still flush with good, fresh water," Polglase said.

BHP and Shenhua have ruled out any mining below the water table on the black floodplains. Both companies say they'll concentrate exploration on coal in the surrounding ridge country of the Liverpool Ranges. Even so, the 2009 "Senate Select Committee on Agriculture and Related Industries":http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/agric_ctte/index.htm noted that ‘BHP and Shenhua were unable to give an unequivocal assurance about the possible impact of mining the ridges on the aquifers.

“No matter the form of mining, we see aquifers being cracked and water supplies being disrupted and there’s a knock on effect and that will be very noticeable in the Liverpool Plains because water is so central,” Polglase said.

Mining will likely bring chemicals to the surface that are "hostile to life as we know it," Polglase said.

“They are different to the chemicals compounds on the surface, because nature has concentrated them over hundreds of millions of years,” he said.

That means activity below the surface can stir up sulphuric acid, nitric acid, lead and mercury, sending the chemicals into the wind and water systems, he said.

“The contamination of the region will make it an infertile place for 20 generations," Ploglase said.

*Food Fight*

Locals concerned for the future of their land, their livelihoods, their food and their health, are fighting against further expansion of mining in their backyards. Dr Pauline Roberts of Save our Soils Liverpool Plains says her Quirindi-based group formed when women in the region decided to take action.

A scientist specializing in applied toxicology, biochemistry and herbal medicine, Roberts was especially concerned with the health risks of heavy metals released into the environment by mining.

“We started to do some of the evening gatherings in the local hall and community centers, explaining what was happening, why we were fighting it, what it meant to everybody’s health, community, farming,” she said. “Then we started to get politically active in our own right, coming down to Canberra, lobbying people. We had a huge writing campaign, involving about 50 girls from the district and we organized the blockade with CCAG.”

The blockade, which lasted for nearly 2 years and involved some 5,000 people, was set up “to prevent illegal land access by the mining companies who tried to shaft us with legal wrangling,” Roberts said.

In 2009, Lou Conway, a professor at the University of New England, spent four months interviewing farmers and residents as part of a research project into community responses to mining in the Liverpool Plains region. People are frustrated and angry about how the provincial government has handled the mine planning process, she said.

“What was reinforced over and over again in our interviews was this sense of anxiety and despair for the future and the failure of the government to manage this in a transparent, meaningful way in terms of protecting the environment and the interests of existing landholders,” Conway said.

New legislation, known as the Land Access Bill, approved by the state government in May 2010, has made things easier for the mining companies, farmers say. The bill overturned a decision of the New South Wales Supreme Court two months prior, which found that BHP had breached requirements of the Mining Act when accessing private land for exploration.

“What the Supreme Court did was to point out that there are various requirements that these companies have to meet,” said David Walker. “You have to discuss with the landowner the particular parts of land you want to explore, the types of drilling methods you’re going to be using, you should notify everyone who has an interest in the land; the land might be owned by such and such a person, but there might be a share farmer there who’s growing the crops who is also going to be impacted. They were not just walking in, but lots of those things hadn’t been happening.”

The recent Access Bill ruled that companies will now only need to negotiate with the primary landholder.

“They’ve certainly made it easier for miners to have access and harder for farmers to be able to fight for fair compensation,” said Pauline Roberts. “People don’t realize today that freehold property rights are nowhere near as strong as they used to be; they have been hugely watered down by the state government and if a mining company really wants to come and drill on your land, indeed if a mining company wants to exploit your land, you really have no say in the matter.”

Many in the community say their voices and concerns have been heard by the mining companies either, despite both BHP and Shenhua having set out community consultation plans as a legal requirement of their exploration licences.

Garry West, chairman of the Caroona Community Consultative Committee is tasked with drawing together key stakeholders in the region. Committee members include landholders, representatives of the business communities of Gunnedah and Quirindi, an Elder from the Wallhollow Indigenous community, representatives of the Country Women’s Association, the Liverpool Plains and Gunnedah Councils, BHP and the Department of Mineral Resources.

“These stakeholder groups are designed for people to raise issues of concern with BHP and call BHP to respond,” West said.

Some of those issues can’t yet be answered because exploration drilling is not complete and BHP hasn’t had access to some key areas, he said.

“But that’s not to say that they haven’t told us where they are drilling, what air and water monitoring stations they have in place," he said. "They report to us, they’ve taken us to those sites, we’ve discussed what the impacts are, and there’s a lot of data that’s being collected and shared with the committee."

According to Tim Duddy, everything is a PR stunt.

“Their community engagement has been ‘We’ll tell you what we’re doing and you’re going to like it or lump it,'" Duddy said.

Roberts agreed, saying community consultation has been “absolutely appalling.”

“They can open up a room and say ‘We’re here to talk to the community’, and if they don’t come, they get the tick in the box anyway," she said. "We have asked for major meetings, but they much prefer to talk to people one on one,which is another strategy to divide and conquer really."

Some residents feel the big miners are using their economic clout, including promises of jobs and regional investment to buy goodwill, instead of spending time to learn about what the community wants. BHP has promised to provide $5 million over their exploration term to support environmental and community development projects, local businesses and industry-related education. Shenhua has also established a $5 million Shenhua Watermark Community Fund.

“It’s the fastest way to buy off the locals,” Roberts said. “They buy football teams, primary schools, they’ve given money to the old people’s home, all the while the uncovered coal trains are going past the schools, depositing toxic coal dust in all the water supplies and on the playgrounds, they’re busy giving them a few thousand bucks for new computers.”

“And if you go back to them and say; ‘No, we’d rather you cover your coal trains’, suddenly no one’s interested in talking to us," Roberts said.

Walker and Duddy concede the funds are appreciated and have gone to some good community projects, but feel that this is not quite enough and wonder who will pay the environmental costs in fifty years time.

“In all honesty, when you consider the money that they are potentially going to make in the region, it’s a drop in the ocean," Duddy said. "They should have a $300million community fund."

The promise of jobs, though, is enticing to many in the region, “especially to those with low incomes, and in farming families where there is that hope that young people will come back here,” Conway said.

BHP says it will create up to 1,000 jobs in the construction of a typical long wall coal mine, and employ between 250 and 300 people once it is in operation.

But according to Walker, a lot of people are yet to be convinced of the benefits of mining, and the ‘old story’ that development brings with it a lot of wealth.

“The reality is that a lot of people employed by the mines tend to live outside the area and fly in and out,” he said. “They might live on the central coast and they come up for a 10-day shift and go home for 10 days. If they’re locals, they’re often not particularly engaged in the community because they’re tied up with shift work. A lot of the local young fellas and girls, for example, don’t tend to play a lot of sport like they used to because their shift work won’t allow it”.

Since 2006, the State government has approved 35 coal mines in New South Wales. According to "Greens MP Lee Rhiannon":http://nonewcoal.greens.org.au/coal/mines-by-region/liverpool-plains-1 recently, this is “The biggest expansion of coal mining in the state’s history.”

“The backdrop is that governments are so desperate for money, they will essentially let anything through so long as there’s good returns to them,” said Polglase.

BHP paid $100 million for the right to explore for coal at Caroona, and Shenhua coughed up $300 million for its Watermark license. If their mines are approved, the government stands to earn a further $130 million from BHP and $375 million from Shenhua in licensing fees alone.

But the locals are putting up a good fight, demanding that no further development goes ahead until an independent water study is complete.

“In the beginning you thought, this is an unwinnable, this is too hard,” Conway said. “But the more we interviewed we started to think, well if these people can’t win, nobody can. It is an extraordinary group of people.”

For the communities of the Liverpool Plains, mining and agriculture cannot co-exist. The flood plains must be preserved for sustainable food production because the health of the country depends on the health of the land producing its food, residents say. The risks of coal mining, they say, are just not worth it.

“Fresh air is not given any value, clean water is not given any value, food is something you have at McDonalds between 6:30 and 6:35 in the morning. Your own health and heartbeats are taken for granted,” Poglase said.

Australia is the driest inhabited country on earth, with less than 6% arable land. At a time when climate change is gripping the planet, and we’re facing a global food and water crisis, these communities argue we should be valuing our good land and limited fresh water supplies a little more; investing in local food production over gritty, carbon-emitting coal.

“Because we are a small number of people, in such a vast country, we think nature is infinite and that we have very little impact on it,” says Polglase. “But the opposite is now apparent; Australia is the continent most headed to desertification, according to NASA, and we’re living on borrowed time.”