"Reeks Of State Capture", NSW Overturns Coal Expansion Ban; 258 Million Tons More C On The Way
The New South Wales government has been accused of being “captured” by the coal industry after it overturned a planning commission decision to block a mine expansion that it found could cause irreversible damage to drinking water and release significant heat-trapping gas. The deputy premier, Paul Toole, and planning minister, Rob Stokes, declared on Saturday the Dendrobium mine expansion near Wollongong – proposed by BHP spin-off South32 – was “state significant infrastructure” due to its role providing coal for the Port Kembla steelworks.
It reversed a planning commission decision in February to reject the proposal, which would have allowed the company to extract an extra 78m tonnes of coal from two areas near the Avon and Cordeaux dams. The dams supply water to metropolitan Sydney and the Macarthur, Illawarra and Wollondilly regions. The commission found South32 had failed to properly quantify the risk of long-term and potentially irreversible impacts, “particularly on the integrity of a vital drinking water source”.
It also factored in the project’s greenhouse gas emissions – estimated across the life of the project to be more than 250m tonnes, roughly half Australia’s annual carbon pollution – and judged the project was not in the public interest.
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Dan Gocher, director of climate and environment at shareholder activist organisation the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, said the Dendrobium decision “reeks of state capture”. He said South32 and the NSW Minerals Council had lobbied the government for months to overturn the commission’s decision. He said the proposal rejected by the planning commission could have drained up to 8bn litres of drinking water from the Illawarra-Sydney catchment a year, destroying fragile wetlands sitting above the site. “Despite these risks, the NSW government has simply rolled over for the coal industry,” he said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/06/captured-by-coal-nsw-government-overturns-decision-to-block-mine-expansion