Hunter Coal: Nobody knows what we are going through so this state can be rich

The Hunter Valley is world famous for its wine and racehorses, and many locals and visitors enjoy its specialty foods, rolling hills, mountain streams and healthy lifestyle. Sadly, for some people, such as those living in the village of Camberwell located in the Hunter heartland, this good life has been destroyed. The noise, lights, traffic and dust caused by nearby coal mining and coal-fired power plants affect them 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Local resident Larry Burgess complains "Nobody knows what we are going through so this state can be rich!"

The Hunter produces over two thirds of NSW’s electricity, in the process generating more than 40 megatonnes of CO2 per annum, emissions equivalent to Australia’s total car fleet. Newcastle, Australia’s six largest city and capital of the Hunter, was originally called Coal Town and the site of the country’s first coal mines, dug at the mouth of the Hunter River by convicts exiled from Sydney after the Vinegar Hill riots in 1804.

Newcastle’s port now exports the largest tonnage of black coal of any port in the world. Coal is Australia’s largest export commodity and almost 50% of Australia’s coal exports are mined in the Hunter Valley and exported through Newcastle.

At any time of the year, up to thirty bulk loader ships sit a kilometre out from Newcastle’s beautiful surf beaches, waiting to load up with Hunter Valley coal and take it to Japan, Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere.
There are 37 coalmines in the Hunter Valley with 17 being open cut mines, 16 being underground mines and 4 utilizing both methods of mining. Another eleven mines are in the planning or construction stage.
Under globalised market forces, the scale of coal mining and export from the Hunter has been massively ramped up. Over 220 square kilometres, a sixth of the Upper Hunter’s valley floor, is covered by open cut coal mines, with one mine, BHP Billiton’s Mt Arthur, covering 40 square kilometres.

Black coal exports comprise ninety per cent of the value of the Hunter region’s export income. Almost all of this coal is exported by just four of these corporations - Rio Tinto, Xstrata, BHP Billiton and AngloCoal, which between them control a third of world coal trade.

The industry employs about 6,500 workers directly and 20,000 indirectly, and spends over $1billion is spent locally on goods and services. The state government extracts royalties of $300 million each year, and hundreds of millions more dollars go to the federal government in taxes. However, the lion’s share of the profits go to the big four foreign-controlled corporations.

Subsidised electricity offered in secret deals by successive state governments has lured energy intensive industries to the region. Foreign companies, Hydro Norsk and Alcan, have established aluminium smelters in the Hunter currently smelting forty percent of Australia’s aluminium while consuming nearly a third of the electricity produced in the region.

Unsurprisingly, the Hunter region has been described as the engine of the NSW economy, because with around 9% of the NSW population it accounts for more than 32% of the state’s exports. However, this engine is in dire need of a reconditioning. While $5 billion of coal is exported annually from the region, the Hunter has consistently worse social welfare indicators than the state average, including higher unemployment, and concentrations of low-income families living alongside some of the highest income earners in the state.
Public services, including critical infrastructure such as public transport rail-lines and hospitals are suffering cuts.

Loss of local control over decision-making and lack of equity in the distribution of ecological, social and economic costs and benefits between locally affected residents, corporations and governments are local concerns.

The ecological and social basis for the Hunter’s sustainable future is at stake in the region’s unhealthy dependence on the coal dollar.

The environment of the Hunter is suffering from the impacts of the extractive industry and fossil-fuel burning with concerns about loss of biodiversity in what has become one of the “most seriously denuded of native vegetation in Eastern Australia”.

With six coal-fired power stations the Region has a quarter of Australia’ major point sources of sulphur dioxide. 30,000 tonnes of fine dust is released into the air annually in the Singleton area from local mines, and a further 1200 tonnes from coal-fired power stations. This contrasts with 870 tonnes annually in the nearby agricultural shire of Scone.

Impacts of mining on river and groundwater health are poorly understood but potentially very significant during and long after mining operations. The Hunter River catchment’s health is threatened by high phosphorus, salinity and bacteria loads, with current mining activity contribute 10% of the river’s salinity load.

Derelict and abandoned mines contribute acid water to streams, wetlands and aquifers and the closure of massive open cut mines over the next few decades will leave huge voids.

The links between ecological and social ill health are becoming clearer, as local research identifies deep feelings of distress about impacts on family homes, farms and natural and cultural heritage in mining and energy production localities of the Upper Hunter. The region has been identified as having the highest cancer rates in NSW, a phenomenon potentially connected to pollutants emitted from the heavy fossil fuel based industrialisation in the region.

Alarm over the local impacts of coal mining and the region’s unhealthy dependency of climate change-causing commodity is leading more locals becoming vocal in opposition to this situation, and demanding an alternative economy.

Locals are concerned that within two decades coal demand will peak and then decline, and the Hunter region will be left with a heavily degraded environment, a massive public health bill, and inadequate infrastructure set up to cater for a dinosaur fossil fuel-based economy. They see that there is a short window of opportunity to redirect the region’s economy onto a more sustainable path and to return a greater percentage of the coal dollars back into the Hunter region in order to rehabilitate the environment and to diversify the economy.

Now is a good time to push for these changes, when coal prices are high and production has blown-out local capacity. Despite production doubling over ten years, employment rates have fallen by a third.

Local organisations and activists met in October 2003, drafting the Maitland Statement that demands a shift to environmental justice and sustainability, based on regional autonomy for decisions affecting the Hunter, planning processes promoting ecologically sustainable development and reform of mining legislation to remove provisions that enable mining leases to over-ride planning and environmental legislation.

The environmental justice framework notes that environmental problems bear down disproportionately on the poor, and that positive environmental indicators such as clean air and water are higher in regions with more equal income distribution, and with greater civil liberties and political rights.

A shift towards sustainability in the Hunter requires policy and action targeting the causes of social and economic disadvantage, particularly the role of the coal industry and fossil fuel dependency.

A shift towards sustainability in the Hunter could be facilitated by a levy on the 100 million tonnes of coal exported out of Newcastle each year. A modest two dollars per tonne levy on exported coal would provide $200 million every year that could fund new job opportunities so the Hunter Region that can wean itself off its coal dependency and re-position itself for such a carbon-constrained energy future.

The considerable skills, knowledge and unique environment in the Hunter could be mobilised to create a new, more diverse economy focused on renewable energy technologies, sustainable agriculture, innovative manufacturing, sustainable tourism and the arts.

A just transition would create new opportunities for displaced coal-industry workers, and for the thousands of other people who can’t currently get secure jobs in the Hunter. Such a transition was effected locally, on a small scale, when BHP closed its Newcastle steelworks in 1998, with thousands of workers offered income support, retraining packages and employment assistance.

A transition to environmental justice and sustainability in the Hunter will require government policy and financial support. A sharp contest is emerging between the current King Coal visions for the Hunter and community demands for a Sustainable Hunter.

Political champions of the coal industry, including local Labour Member of Parliament and former Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources, Joel Fitzgibbon, suggest “we must focus our attention to burning coal more cleanly and efficiently.” Governments are sinking hundreds of millions of research and investment funds into spurious ‘clean coal’ and carbon geo-sequestration technologies, at the expense of renewable energy. Industry is demanding more public investment in rail and port infrastructure to ship even more coal more rapidly out of Newcastle.

The resistance to the unhealthy hold of the coal industry on the Hunter is decades long. Local voices of opposition are becoming louder as the impacts of the current development paradigm more obviously overwhelm local environment and community health.

Local organisations, like watchdog group Minewatch, and individuals protesting new mine proposals are calling for a mining moratorium, challenging the insatiability and lack of vision of governments and corporations benefiting from keeping the Hunter locked into fossil fuel dependency.

The local residents struggle for environmental justice goes hand-in-hand with the struggle of allies outside the Hunter for a clean energy future for Australia and the world.

Author:
Geoff Evans is a director of the Mineral Policy Institute, a community organisation that monitors the mining industry. He lives in Newcastle where he is researching “Just Transitions To Sustainability In A Mining Affected Region: Community Visions and Strategies” at the University of Newcastle.

Endnotes:

i. Ray, Greg, 7/2/05. Villagers beset by mine blasts battle dust in homes, gardens, The Herald
ii. Diesendorf, M. 2003. Australia’s Polluting Power: Coal-Fired Electricity and Its Impact On Global Warming, WWF Australia, Sydney.
iii. Comerford, J., 1997. Coal and Colonials: The Founding of the Australian Coal Mining Industry, United Mineworkers of Australia (NSW Northern District Branch of the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division), Aberdare, NSW, Australia
iv. Mineral Consultative Committee, 1999, p v
v. New South Wales Department of State and Regional Development, 2003. Moving Ahead: Relocating to Regional NSW, http://www.movingaheadnsw.com/regions_councils/region.asp?RegionID=6). Date accessed: 4 April 2003.
vi. New South Wales Department of Mineral Resources (NSW DMR), 2003. NSW 2003 Coal Industry Profile, NSW DMR, St Leonards, NSW
vii. Williams, Nikki, 11/2/05. Hunter miners have earned proud standing, The Herald
viii. Ray, Greg, 7/2/05. $300m royalties as Valley strains, The Herald
ix. New South Wales Department of State and Regional Development, 2003. Moving Ahead: Relocating to Regional NSW, http://www.movingaheadnsw.com/regions_councils/region.asp?RegionID=6). Date accessed: 4 April 2003
x. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Census 2001, Table B13, Individual Income by Age by Sex, AGPS, Canberra
xi. Albrecht G., and Gutberlet, J. 2000. Sustainability and the Hunter Region, in Journeys:The Making of the Hunter Region, 2000, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards
xii. Bridgman, 2000. Weather, Climate and Air Quality: The Hunter’s Atmosphere in Journeys:The Making of the Hunter Region, 2000, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards
xiii. National Pollutant Inventory, www.npi.gov.au
xiv. Healthy Rivers Commission of NSW, May 2002, Final Report – Independent Inquiry into the Hunter River, Healthy Rivers Commission of NSW, Sydney,pp 22, 53
xv. Connor, L., Albrecht, G., Higginbotham, Freeman, S., Smith, W., N., Environmental Health and Human Health: A Pilot Study in Upper Hunter Communities, paper presented to the Airs, Waters, Places Conference, University of Newcastle, April 2004
xvi. Kelly, Alice, 14 Feb 2005. Cancer Scare: Hunter death rate highest in state, The Herald
xvii. Hunter Environment Lobby, October, 2003.
xviii. Agyeman, J., Bullard, R., Evans, B. (2003). Joined-up Thinking: Bringing together Sustainability, Environmental justice and Equity, in Agyeman, J., Bullard, R., Evans, B Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World, Earthscan, London
xix. Fitzgibbon, 19/4/ 2004, Clean Coal is the Chance for a Better Climate, Newcastle Herald
xx. Ray, Greg, 7/2/05. $300m royalties as Valley strains, The Herald

For more information, please contact:

Igor O'Neill


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Created: 21 Jun 2005 | Last updated: 21 Jun 2005

This page: http://www.mpi.org.au/ campaigns/climate/hunter_coal/

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