Adani to drain Australia’s scarce water reserves

By Leith van Onselen

Late last year, The Conversation created the below infographic explaining the key impacts expected from Adani’s Carmichael mega coal mine, which is well worth a look:

For mine, the most damning information contained in this infographic is that:

1. Adani would be allowed to extract unlimited volumes of water from the Great Artesian Basin for 60-years (a projected 12 billion litres a year); and
2. It would burn 4.49 billion tonnes of carbon dioxite equivalent if/when the mine hits peak production (out of total global fossil fuel emissions of 37 billion in 2017).

Today, scientific experts have raised concern that Adani’s Carmichael project could permanently deplete Australia’s groundwater reserves, draining desert oases. From The ABC:

One of the world’s last unspoiled desert oases could permanently dry up under Adani’s plan to drain billions of litres of groundwater a year for its Queensland mine, scientific experts say.

The Doongmabulla Springs Complex, a one-square-kilometre expanse of nationally important wetlands near the proposed site of the Carmichael coal mine, faced serious risk under the latest Adani plan before the Queensland Government, hydrogeologists argued.

The source of the ancient springs remains in doubt, with two Federal Government groundwater studies conducted since Adani received Commonwealth environmental approval in 2014 unable to identify which of two underground aquifers feeds the threatened ecosystem.

RMIT environmental engineering expert Matthew Currell said Adani’s groundwater plan, obtained by the ABC, ignored this “major scientific uncertainty” and falsely assumed its proposed mine and the springs tapped different sources…

A 2016 federal science department study under the Lake Eyre Basin Springs Assessment Project suggested it was more likely the miner would drain the very aquifer that fed the Doongmabulla Springs, Mr Currell said.

“If that is the case, there is a possibility that the mining would cause complete loss of the springs,” he said.

“Based on the current information that we have, I’d say that’s more than a remote possibility.

“It would certainly lead to much greater impacts than have been predicted to date by Adani and its consultants regarding the impact of the mining on the springs”…

Adani did not respond to detailed questions from the ABC…

In short, the project is economic and environmental vandalism writ large. And for what? A pithy 1,464 full-time equivalent jobs that would be created over the course of the project (see here and here):

Over the life of the Project it is projected that on average around 1,464 employee years of full time equivalent direct and indirect jobs will be created. More specifically, it is projected that the Project will increase employment in:

• the Local MIW Region by 15,943 employee years (average annual increase of 483 FTE jobs)
• Queensland as a whole by 39,796 employee years (average annual increase of 1,206 FTE jobs)
• Australia as a whole by 48,324 employee years (average annual increase of 1,464 FTE jobs).

As illustrated in Figure 2, the total additional employment is projected to be broadly constant throughout the projection period, but will experience some variation by region year to year.

While just as many are lost in NSW and more broadly in QLD coal mining, formerly at the AFR:

Analysis by Wood Mackenzie commissioned by investment group The Infrastructure Fund estimates the railway could unlock north Queensland mines capable of producing more than 200 million tonnes of coal per year.

…”While Minister Canavan has previously stated that he is unconcerned with the impact of North Queensland coal expansion on NSW coal miners, our modelling also makes clear that Queensland’s Bowen and Surat Basins will also be hit hard by any flood of subsidised competition,” Mr Van Rooyen says.

“Minister Canavan’s billion dollar support for the Galilee coal basin is not just playing state against state, its mate against mate.”

That’s before you calculate the externalities of damage to the reef, tourism and climate change.

Weirdly, the entire boodoggle is eerily similar to John Maynard Keynes’ dictum:

“If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.”

I’m pretty sure he did not have in mind poisoning the land along the way.

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