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Dr Neil Sheppard and David Johnson commissioners on the final Planning Assessment Commission for the Boggabri Coal Mine has “determined to approve the project, subject to amended conditions”.  MCCC Media Release

Determination Report 

Conditions of approval  11 MB, 66 pages

Much of the determination report revolved around noise standards, dust standards and acquisition rights for affected parties.

The project conditions have been heavily modified from the original EA undertakings by the company and the requirements of the Department of Planning. The commission takes great pains to establish its reasoning for these conditions and at times  the commission seems to be admonishing the Department for its attempts to thwart the concerns of the community.

The MCCC is pleased that some of its concerns have been addressed and that the project outcomes will be improved.

However, there are still 2 major issues to be resolved and we are evaluating our options;

Firstly that the cumulative affects are yet to be assessed. There is certainty for the company but not for the community as a strategy for monitoring means that no one knows to what extent that they will be impacted. Farm and familiy plans may be put on hold as the only real option for those in the impact zone is acquisition. This is not good enough for those who have called Maules Creek home for a number of generations and whose options may be not realistically include acquisition.

Also the size and scope of the project and its impacts are unknown because the  project has been approved subject to a wide range of management reports, management strategies and adaptive management plans. The final project could be markedly different to what was placed on exhibition and there is no facility for the community to participate in the development of these plans.

For the Leard State Forest, the impact will be devastating and given the recent debate in farming circles regarding the Native Veg laws, it is inexplicable that this development was proposed in the first place.

The Planning Assessment Commission is approving projects based on monitoring. Well thanks to new technoclogy, two can play the monitoring game.

For local communities it is important to get control of the data and really drive the “monitoring” by increasing the level of detail. Here are some cheap ideas to get you underway.

Noise Monitoring – Iphone App

Basic iphone Apps such as  “Sound Level” are available for only 99 cents. Turns out most of the apps are  99 cents although they do ratchet up in feature and price.  Soundmeter for example Is $29.99 and it  can do sharing of data via email or twitter. All it needs is a back end server to collect and collate the data. This would be a great activity for the eco nerd.

There are plenty of others

e.g. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/advanced-decibel-meter/id419886085?mt=8
http://www.healthyhearing.com/content/articles/Hearing-loss/Protection/47805-The-best-phone-apps-to-measure-noise-levels

Apparently these apps are good for anything under 90 decibels so that is fine for mining as 40 db is the threshhold. It is possible to add an external microphone for better monitoring although the inbuilt mic should be OK for our purposes

What we would really like is something that logs the noise unattended and emails the file every “x” minutes, we could then gather the data and put into Excel, a web page and copy the EPA or whoever. It must be out there… or maybe we could request a modification to an existing app.

Air Quality Monitoring

Air Quality can also be monitored at a slightly higher charge. Take a  look at these hand held air quality monitors starting from $6,500. Something the MCCC is considering. We could have our own air quality monitoring network, slightly manual but they do measure PM2.5’s.

You would have seen our media release yesterday and perhaps some TV media regarding our “community led” Health Impact Assessment (HIA) which we will be partnering with the Centre for Health Equity Training, Research and Evaluation (CHETRE) from the UNSW. Their website is www.hiaconnect.edu.au.

Health Impact Assessment is both a technical decision-making tool and process for stakeholder engagement that seeks to maximize benefits and prevent or minimize the negative health consequences of a particular project, policy or plan. This is a refreshing change to the approach of the coal industry and the Dept of Planning which focuses on mitigation, minimum standards, exceptions etc.

CHETRE have a proven methodology for running HIA’s with a number of objectives and milestones used to guide the study and a standardised assessment approach. This structured evidence based process ensures transparency in decision making, which is also refreshing given our recent Namoi Water Study experiences. This document outlines the HIA methodology.

The structure for running the HIA is similar to the NWS in that we require;

Scoping Committee. A group of people from across the region to determine the Terms of Reference (ToR) for the study. This includes making decisions about the geographic region to be covered in the assessment, areas of focus, timeframe, resources and what evidence will be gathered. We need to put together a scoping committee of motivated, community people from across the region to form this scoping committee which will have a limited life sitting initially in mid September for half a day and then working with CHETRE to set the ToR.

It is important that this committee reflect our community’s views. It will comprise 9 community members and 1 from CHETRE. This is a community initiative and there are already a range of groups who could provide concerned people to sit on the scoping committee. The Namoi Community Network and the NW Alliance are 2 groups who immediately spring to mind.

Facilitator. CHETRE has agreed to facilitate the HIA scoping workshop and work with the scoping committee to develop the terms of reference.

Stakeholder/Steering Committee. This committee will be formed after the ToR are determined. Ideally there will be people from the original scoping committee plus other professional and experienced community members. We will need a strong chairperson who is experienced in health matters, is well connected, has excellent meeting skills and is seen as independent.

Independent Experts. From time to time experts will be required to put together information to achieve the milestones. E.g. An early stage is to do a health profile of the region. This may require a graduate student, a number of GP’s or a section of Hunter and New England Health.

Sponsors. Bodies to fund the study beyond the original scoping phase. Once the scope is in place we can determine the likely budget. The bigger the scope, the bigger the budget.

At this point we believe that we have a good chance of getting the funding – given the widely held concerns about health impacts. However we believe that rather than get the funding from one source we should get multiple sponsors to ensure that no one group can influence the studies outcome. Options include the NCMA, RDANI, Cotton Australia, Lock the Gate, Hunter and NE Health, Dept of Planning, Corporates (e.g. Graincorp).

We will be using the Health Forum in Gunnedah on the 4^th of August to get feedback on these ideas and set the direction for the phase 1 scoping.

Three persons dressed as Koalas entered the office of mining company Idemitsu in Brisbane to protest against their plans to destroy Koala habitat with an open-cut coal mine near Boggabri, in north-west NSW.  One Koala locked itself to the front door of the office.

At the same time Japanese environment group Kiko Network has visited the offices of Idemitsu in Tokyo and hand delivered a letter, translated into Japanese, asking the President of parent company Idemitsu Kosan to withdraw from the proposed Boggabri mine expansion.

A map attached to the letter shows areas where Koalas have been sighted or recorded within the footprint of the proposed mine expansion into Leard State Forest.

Pictures

Media release

Community groups have decided to take up the challenge of assessing the impact of coal and gas mining on human health in north-western NSW, citing the failure of governments and companies to do anything meaningful about assessing the serious health risks.

The Maules Ck Community Council is working with the University of NSW to develop a community led Health Impact Assessment (HIA) of coal and gas mining in the Gunnedah Basin, and will be developing a steering committee and inviting people to participate.

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About the HIA Process

Bloomberg are reporting that the Whitehaven Assets including the Maules Creek Project are being pitched to the banks again.

After selling the idea to the original backers, the public in a IPO last year, Whitehaven itself and now to another group of backers, there is concrete evidence that the Maules Creek community  are caught up in a speculative bubble and not a mining boom.

Speculation is more about perception than substance and investors would we well advised to be careful.

Much of the Whitehaven assets are in the Leard State Forest in northern NSW. This area is subject to environmental protection under the Federal EPBC act. There is community opposition to clearing 5000 Ha of forest for an open cut  coal mine which is the home to 390 species, 34 of which are threatened and endangered. The Koala and its habitat is among these.

Approval for the Maules Creek Project has not been granted as it requires both State and Federal consent.  By anyones thinking, clearing a forest for a coal mine is seriously flawed and the project may have to be re-designed as an underground mine. This will change the economics of the project and with a falling coal price plus a 50% share price premium, Whitehaven may just take the profit and buy back in when a proper correction occurs.

It seems that Kerry Packer was wrong, there could be more than 1 Allan Bond.

After 4 days our campaign has 33%  of our target of 250  individual messages to the key decision makers. You’ve got to be happy with that as the MCCC gets up to speed on a totally new (to us) media space.

More importantly, there have been  responses to our campaign from further afield as the  plight of the Leard State Forest filters through.

Thanks for the support of local businesses and organisations who have posted our “Take Action” link

It is time for our community to step up and for our leaders to prove their worth.

The MCCC in conjunction with other groups in the Gunnedah Basin are working toward a regional  HIA  to properly assess the health impacts to the community of coal and coal seem gas.

A HIA has at its starting point that for any project to be approved it  should add to community health outcomes.

The MCCC has independent gap analysis between the EP&A Act and the Environmental Assessments for both the Boggabri Coal and Maules Creek projects that  shows the need for a HIA.

In our submissions we identified the absence of a HIA as a major shortfall and highlighted the need to the “Planning” Department and Planning “Assessments” Commission to establish baseline health for the region as a matter of urgency.

To date we have not heard anything in this regard. Other than approve a mega coal mine complex, Planning is failing to plan and the Assessments Commission is failing to assess.

As such we will initiate our own HIA for the Gunnedah Basin and are partnering with another organisation that has “community led” HIA methodologies. As a courtesy, we are writing to the Planning Minister to inform him of our decision and are looking forward to his positive response.

Further discussions are ongoing, however this will become a focus as the State Government planning process grinds to its inevitable conclusion. Watch this space.

The MCCC launches its new website today. You can express your thoughts directly to the key decision makers, Barry O’Farrell and Tony Burke about these inappropriate developments via our Take Action page

The Maules Creek Community Council recently received a letter from the Minister for Planning, Brad Hazzard, stating that he would NOT intervene and make the Planning Assessment Commission go back and properly implement the Terms of Reference for the Boggabri and Maules Ck coal projects.

The MCCC has responded by launching an internet campaign targeting NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell and Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke, calling on them to step in and save Leard Forest and surrounding farmland from open-cut mining.

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