Last week we premiered the brand new #StopAdani documentary A Mighty Force. With a combined membership of around two million people, the movement to stop Adani's unbankable mine will continue to grow and shift the politics on coal. 

At the Mackay premiere of the Stop Adani documentary, A Mighty Force, local cane grower Michelle Ready explained to locals why she is so passionate about stopping Adani's mega-mine. 

My name’s Michelle and I’m a farmer’s wife.  I’m not an expert by any means, but I’ve taken time to do the research and have spoken with many, better informed people, including farmers who are at the coal face, so to speak.  The farm we’re on has been in my husband’s family around 60 years, and we wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the groundwater.  It provides all our domestic needs.  On the farming side however, we’re lucky to have limited access to the creek, when the rains fail to come.

But there are farmers who aren’t as lucky as us, whose only reliable source is groundwater from the Galilee Basin, part of the Great Artesian Basin.  Out there, at the Carmichael mine site, groundwater is everything, and it absolutely defies belief that our elected officials have decided to give it away, free and unlimited amounts of it, to a company with the most atrocious history of environmental degradation.

Coal mines require enormous amounts of water.  I remember years ago hearing that wars would be fought over water, and I thought at the time, “no way there’s so much water, what’s the problem”.  I was wrong.  Farmers are the first to feel the effects of drought, and climate change, yet eventually everyone will.  Look at Cape Town. Broken Hill.

Mackay Conservation Group says a new Queensland Government report confirms Adani’s coal terminal has polluted the nationally significant Caley Valley wetlands during Cyclone Debbie and shows the company cannot be trusted to operate a mine, rail and port operation in Queensland.

A report commissioned by the Queensland Department of Environment & Heritage Protection (DEHP), which relied on samples taken four weeks after the cyclone, has found up to 10 per cent of sediment in the wetlands near Adani’s Abbot Point coal terminal was actually coal that the company allowed to leave its site. This follows Adani being fined $12,900 for polluting the Reef coast. Adani is currently challenging the fine in court.

Mackay Conservation Group coordinator, Peter McCallum, who visited the contamination site at the invitation of DEHP to observe the contamination first hand, said “It was clear to me that there was coal everywhere we looked when we visited the site a month after Cyclone Debbie. This report confirms those observations and makes clear that Adani is not fit to operate a massive coal project in Queensland,” Mr McCallum said.

Mackay Conservation Group, which last week joined government scientists on a site visit to Adani’s Abbot Point facility where it was evident Adani had allowed coal to pollute the sensitive Caley Valley wetlands during Cyclone Debbie, say the wholesale breach of Adani’s pollution license shows the company cannot be trusted to operate in Australia

Coordinator of the Mackay Conservation Group, Mr Peter McCallum said, “Even with a license to pollute in its back pocket, Adani has still managed to exceed the permitted discharge of contaminants by 800 per cent. This is one more sign Adani’s mine should not proceed

“This breach isn't a minor one. It's equivalent to driver travelling at over 300km/h in a school zone

“Adani have been found to be operating a coal terminal in a cyclone-prone area that cannot withstand a cyclone without risk of contaminating the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and the Caley Valley Wetlands.

Press release from 5 August 2015

ADANI CARMICHAEL COURT DEFEAT NO MERE TECHNICALITY

Court cases reveal deep flaws in modelling, devastating impacts

Indian coal giant Adani, the mining industry and the Federal Environment Minister are wrong to characterise today’s Federal court decision as a ‘technical glitch’, when it is symptomatic of deep flaws with the Carmichael proposal that have only been revealed through proper court scrutiny, said Ms Ellen Roberts, Coordinator of Mackay Conservation Group.

In January this year, MCG launched a legal challenge to Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt’s approval of the Carmichael coal mine. We said that Greg Hunt ignored the contribution of the mine to increased greenhouse gasses and climate change.

Last week we added a further ground to our challenge. Reading over the documents from the case, it was clear that Greg Hunt had chosen to ignore Adani’s poor environmental record in India, even though he knew that Adani had recently been found guilty of violating India’s environment laws in connection with their development at the Mundra Port.

You can read media coverage of this latest addition to our case in the Courier Mail, the Guardian, and the Sydney Morning Herald and at the ABC online.

Getup! travelled to India to talk to people who are living with the environmental devastation at Adani’s Indian port, click below to watch the video.

On 11 March the new government announced their new proposal for the Abbot Point expansion, which shifted dredge spoil from the Caley Valley wetlands to a site immediately adjacent on the former site of terminal 2.

The series of new proposals at Abbot Point are the result of community, scientific and international concern about the compatibility of expanding coal export infrastructure at a time when the health of the Great Barrier Reef is in serious decline.

No-one wants to see increased sediment in the wetlands and the Reef as a result of the new proposal. The new development at Abbot Point was discussed at our last volunteer meeting and the views of the MCG volunteers on the new proposal are summarised at our website. Comments welcome.

The following summarises a discussion at a Mackay Conservation Group volunteers meeting on Thursday 19 March. Please leave any comments below:

The Queensland government wants to dredge 1.7 million cubic metres from the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and then dump this material into settling ponds in the Caley Valley wetlands, wiping out habitat for endangered and migratory birds and risking sediment running back into the Reef.

If you have two minutes, please make a submission to Greg Hunt: https://caleyvalley.good.do/stop-fast-tracking-abbot-point-dredging-and-dumping/send-in-a-submission-to-protect-the-reef-wetlands/