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Protecting Sydney's Water Catchments from Coal And PROTECTING SYDNEY’S WATER CATCHMENTS FROM COAL AND GAS Millions of people rely on clean drinking water from Sydney’s water catchments. Mining in the catchment areas already cause the loss of large quantities of water, contamination, and irreparable damage to the catchment. Coal and gas mining companies hold licenses over most of Sydney’s drinking water catchment and plan to significantly expand mining in the area. % 87 OF PEOPLE WANT COAL AND COAL SEAM GAS BANNED IN WATER CATCHMENTS There are five major drinking water catchments that are specially managed to provide drinking water for 4.5 million people in Sydney, the Illawarra, Blue Mountains, Southern Highlands, Goulburn and Shoalhaven regions. Longwall mining results in land subsidence in the restricted Special Areas. Large parts of these catchments are gazetted as “Special Areas”, where activities on the surface are heavily regulated by the Sydney Catchment Authority (SCA) to prevent harm to the water supply. The general public is not allowed into the Special Areas without prior permission from the Sydney Catchment Authority and must be escorted by SCA staff while on sanctioned visits. Trespassers risk fines of up to $44,000. Beneath the surface, however, long-wall mining for coal occurs, which has This subsidence causes creeks and continues to cause damage to the creeks and wetlands that feed and river beds to crack, draining Sydney’s drinking water storages. them of their vital flows. There are eight active underground coal mines in the broader Sydney Catchment, four in the Southern Coalfields, around Helensburgh and four in the Western Coalfields, near Lithgow. Together these mines produce around 20 million tonnes of coal per annum. Four of the Southern Coalfields mines are active within the Special Areas. These are BHP’s Dendrobium mine, Peabody’s Metropolitan mine, and Cracking and subsidence releases Wollongong Coal’s Wongawilli and Russell Vale mines. tonnes of contaminants locked away in the rock, thus polluting waterways. The Metropolitan and Woronora Special Areas have been worst affected, with 25% of the areas already mined for coal. Longwall mining also occurs near the Upper Canal, Cordeaux and Avon Reservoirs, Woronora Reservoir, and Cataract Reservoirs. The Camden Gas Project currently operates 110 coal seam gas production wells in the Sydney area, but these are not located in the catchment. Apex Energy have a Part 3A approval to drill 15 CSG exploration wells beneath Entering into a restricted abandoned mine workings in the catchment, but this approval has not been Special Area can carry fines of acted upon. Due to the exclusion zones for CSG within 2km of residential up to $44,000, yet four mines areas and the creation of Dharawal National Park, there are now 10 operate in these areas. boreholes permitted to be drilled in the Special Areas. www.landwaterfuture.org.au PROTECTING SYDNEY’S WATER CATCHMENTS FROM COAL AND GAS HOW DOES MINING DAMAGE WATER CATCHMENTS? Longwall mining involves the cutting away of whole panels of a coal seam from between other rock layers, using a longwall machine which, as it progresses forward leaves an open void, known as a goaf. The panels are generally 150-400m wide, 2-3m high and can be several kilometres long. When the mining occurs, as the longwall machine moves forward, this leads to immediate fracturing of rock formations above the coal seam, and this rock collapses into the goaf. As this happens, fracturing and movement is caused vertically and horizontally in the rock strata above. This leads to subsidence depressions forming on the surface, but also to dramatic fracturing, cracking and collapsing of cliffs, cracking of creek beds and also the bedrock beneath upland swamps. Deep fissures can also open up in the ground, particularly on slopes. Surface cracking as a result of underground coal mining can lead to loss of stream flow, changes to wa- ter quality (increased iron oxides, manganese, sulphides and electrical conductivity, and lower dissolved oxygen), growth of iron-oxidising bacteria which can also be seen as a rusty-coloured mass in the water, and release of gas into the water column (oxidation of gas may lead to death of river plants and animals). These impacts have already been observed to be occurring in the sensitive riverine environments of Sydney’s drinking water catchment. One of the worst examples of damage from longwall mining in the Sydney catchment is the Waratah Rivulet, which previously provided 30% of drinking water to the Sutherland Shire. The once pristine rivulet was cracked, drained and dewatered for about 2 kms of its length and polluted with iron oxide after long- wall mining in the early 2000s. Serious impacts are still occurring in the downstream sections being affected by the expansion approved in 2009. Modelling and gauging by the Sydney Catchment Authority indicates water is being lost from the Woronora Reservoir catchment as a result of surface water being redirected into subsidence cracks along the Waratah Rivulet. The 2013 audit of the Sydney catchment identified multiple instances of subsidence-related impacts from the underground coal mines in the Sydney catchment over just the previous three years. These included in- stances of creeks “disappearing” into cracks, and elevated acidity and metals readings in the groundwater. In addition to subsidence, underground mining also requires “dewatering”, of coal seams, which changes groundwater dynamics. Dewatering is the removal of underground water from the targeted coal seams, which are themselves aquifers. This process changes the pressure in surrounding aquifers, and groundwater is drawn to the voids created by the mining, creating drawdown of the water table in nearby areas. In the Sydney catchment, the surface creeks that feed the dams and the groundwater are frequently connected, feeding each other at different times, so drawdown of aquifers also affects creeks and streams that feed the dams that provide Sydney’s water. Monitoring of groundwater levels in the Hawkesbury Sandstone aquifer has found water levels have dropped by nearly nine metres as a result of a Gujarat NRE (now Wollongong Coal) mine. www.landwaterfuture.org.au PROTECTING SYDNEY’S WATER CATCHMENTS FROM COAL AND GAS THE ROLE OF UPLAND SWAMPS The Woronora Plateau harbours the greatest extent and one of the oldest recorded upland wetlands on the Australian mainland, which have been there for thousands of years and occupy more than 6,400ha of the Metropolitan Special Area. The accumulation of sediment in the soils of the swamps retains and slowly purifies Sydney’s water before it seeps out, joining the streams that feed the dams. Importantly, the swamps, which are in an area of high and reliable rainfall, hold that rain like giant sponges and release it slowly after rain, even during dry times, providing the baseflow for the river systems they feed. Underground mining has already damaged and drained a number of these important wetlands, so that they no longer function as swamps. The swamps are now listed as an endangered ecological community, and longwall mining is acknowledged to be a key threatening process for the swamps, but the damage has not been halted or reversed, particularly in the Metropolitan and Woronora Special Areas. The Catchment Authority reports, “Sensitive, upland swamps in some sub-catchments, affected by longwall mining, have begun to show deterioration in condition, particularly of native vegetation and surface water availability” and has recommended the minimalist protection of a 400m buffer on either side of these highly sensitive areas. The proposal to provide a 400m “risk management” buffer for significant environmental features vulnerable to subsidence, includ- ing rivers, significant streams, significant cliff lines and valley infill swamps, was also made by the Inquiry into the Impacts of Underground Coal Mining on Natural Features in the Southern Coalfields in 2007, but has never been implemented. COAL MINES DRAIN 12 BILLION GLASSES OF WATER FROM SYDNEY'S SUPPLIES EVERY YEAR. WHAT A WASTE! www.landwaterfuture.org.au PROTECTING SYDNEY’S WATER CATCHMENTS FROM COAL AND GAS EXPANSION OF COAL AND COAL SEAM GAS Coal or coal seam gas licences cover over 30% of the total catchment areas. The 2013 Audit of the catchment pays particular attention to the pressure on the catchment being brought by mining, because mining posts “a potential risk to water quality, ecosystem health and land condition in the Catchment.” In the last three-year audit period, 29 new applications for major projects were 80% made that involved mining projects in the Upper Coxs Catchment, Wingecarribee MINING EXPLORATION Special Areas and Metropolitan Special Areas. The Department of Planning gave LICENCES AND APPLICATIONS approval to 10 coal projects and one coal seam gas project in the catchment during this period. In February 2013, the Department of Planning and Infrastructure approved 305 metre longwalls in BHP- Billiton’s Dendrobium mine, between the Cordeaux and Avon reservoirs. These longwalls will pass beneath four large upland swamps on the Woronora Plateau. In 2009, Peabody’s Metropolitan mine expansion was approved in the Woronora Special Area. An expansion of the Wongawilli mine in the Metropolitan Special Area was also approved. Wollongong Coal (formerly Gujarat NRE) have a current proposal to introduce 390 metre longwalls, includ- ing a third longwall seam cut beneath two already-mined seams in the Metropolitan Special Area. The Board of the Sydney Catchment Authority (SCA), which manages the catchment, has decided to oppose applications for exploration or extraction for the purpose of coal seam gas extraction within Special Areas. The SCA will also oppose longwall coal mining within Dams Safety Committee notification areas applying to prescribed dams managed by the Authority. Though the SCA has not taken a position of opposing all new coal mining proposals in the Special Areas, it has recently made submissions on mining proposals that include alarming warnings about future impacts.
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