The Lock the Gate Alliance has welcomed the Federal Environment Minister’s decision to apply the new Commonwealth law protecting water resources from coal mining and coal seam gas to nearly fifty resource projects seeking Government approval, but warns the real test is yet to come.

The new ‘water trigger’ in the Federal Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act came into force in late June, but a question mark has remained, till now, over 50 coal and gas projects that were already in the assessment process.

A poll released by Lock the Gate Alliance today shows that 84% of respondents in NSW support a ban on coal and coal seam gas (CSG) mining on productive agricultural lands and 74% support a ban on fracking. 

The poll debunks comments made by Federal Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane this week that sought to demonise farmers and people opposed to CSG mining as 'anarchists' and 'people who have no respect for the rule of law'.

The Northern Inland Council for the Environment lodged an application for an interlocutory injunction in the Federal Court of Australia late yesterday, in a bid to prevent Whitehaven Coal from clearing important areas for the construction of the Maules Ck coal mine near Narrabri.

Last week the judicial review case brought by the Council against the Federal Government and Whitehaven Coal in relation to the Maules Ck mine was heard by the Federal Court, but it is not known when a decision will be delivered.

The interlocutory injunction application will be heard on Wednesday morning in the Federal Court in Sydney.  It is seeking orders from the Court to prevent construction of the mine destroying nationally significant forests until a decision has been made on the full case.

A new report released today, written in consultation with former senior Queensland government officer Tom Crothers, who served as the state’s General Manager of Water Planning and Allocation, raises alarm bells on the potentially devastating cumulative impacts on the region’s groundwater resources  from 9 proposed new  mega coal mines in the Galilee Basin, Central Queensland.

Once again, the criminal justice system has failed to address the scandalous state of the Queensland environmental regulatory system with regard to mining.

Retired Supreme Court judge, Mr Stanley Jones, was appointed by the CMC to investigate the complaints by Drew Hutton from the Lock the Gate Alliance and Simone Marsh, a former environmental assessor with the Coordinator-General.

Mr Jones made the puzzling decision not to investigate either the environmental or health impacts of the coal seam gas industry as these did not fall within the CMC’s jurisdiction.

Lock the Gate Alliance president, Drew Hutton, said it was not the environment as such that he should have looked at but the extent to which public servants acted within the framework of the Environmental Protection Act.