It’s dry country up here, west of Emerald in Central Queensland.
Free standing water is like liquid gold to us.
Luckily for graziers like me, we have the Great Artesian Basin, our greatest inland water resource, which covers 22% of Australia.
More than 81% of Great Artesian Basin springs are now inactive, and I’m the first to acknowledge that a lot of that harm was caused by water extraction by graziers and farmers.
Now, the very same governments that spent so much time and effort working with graziers to cap bores and install pipes, are handing out unlimited quantities of water, including Great Artesian Basin water, to coal and gas companies.
In Adani’s Groundwater Dependent Ecosystem Management Plan, which determines how they deal with the risk to these natural springs, they ignore the information from the bioregional assessment.
The Adani Management Plan does not refer to the new research that has found geological faulting in nearby areas or the fact that the true source of the Doongmabulla Springs is still unknown.
It does not refer to the new research that the bioregional assessment recommended should be undertaken to identify the source of the springs and assess the true risk of the mine – seismic surveys and a nest of deep bores.
The bioregional assessment was initiated by the commonwealth government several years ago, to quantify the cumulative impacts and risks that multiple new coal and gas projects were having on Queensland’s water resources.
And out here in this dry country, that puts our future on the line.