Major Project in Alpha Threatens Nature Refuge

On Friday the temperature in the central Queensland town of Alpha hit 41° C, but the real heat is coming from the massive coal developments currently underway, with the Federal Government on Wednesday giving Major Project Facilitation status to the proposed “China First” coal project. We recently received an update from Paola Cassoni, co-owner of the threatened Bimblebox Refuge at Alpha, which is related below, but first some background.

Waratah Coal's China First Project is the largest of three mines in the Alpha region with Federal Government support, the other two being Hancock coal's "Kevin's Corner" and "Alpha Coal Project". Together these three super-mines total 100 million tonnes of new coal production per year (Queensland's current total capacity is around 200 Mt). This is a huge problem for our climate as the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from this expansion alone is approximately 230 million tonnes per year, which is over 50% of Australia’s current total emissions!

On top of this huge greenhouse burden, within the boundaries of the exploration permit lies one of the few biodiversity havens left in this region of Central Queensland in Bimblebox Nature Refuge. We've given some background on the story of Bimblebox before in this post.

We believe that it is utterly unacceptable for coal mines to be developed on gazetted nature refuges. They never have before and now is definitely not the time to start. with some timely public pressure we can stop this coal mine!

From a more local perspective, the local Longreach paper has been getting behind the cause of nature refuges threatened by mining (see the front page story here) and Paola is continuing to hear reports of people supportive of their fight.

There was also a community cabinet meeting in Barcaldine (near Alpha) recently. When Anna Bligh was announcing this huge mining development and expecting applause there was hardly a clap. Another co-owner of the Bimblebox spoke to Environment Minister Kate Jones at that meeting, who tried to distance herself from the whole affair saying it was a huge problem she had inherited. Another indication that with some well timed public pressure we can stop this ludicrous project!

Another positive step is that The Department of Environment and Resource Management are finally taking Paola’s complaints about the damage done to the Nature Refuge during this exploration phase. This awareness in Government is due to a huge and sustained effort by the owners of Bimblebox and they really need our support.

Bimblebox will be launching a postcard campaign targeted at the Queensland Government at Woodford this year which we will be supporting them with. Please get in touch if you would like to help distribute postcards either at Woodford or in your community