BHPB's ‘Zero Harm’ Policy Sham - Premier Must Act
Friday, 08 February 2008 10:00
BHP Billiton is a corporate hypocrite when downplaying its mining impacts on the Nepean River, which contradict the company's 'Zero Harm' policy in its 2007 Sustainability Report, Total Environment Centre said today.
TEC has also invited Premier Morris Iemma to examine the extensive damage in Sydney’s southern water catchments.
BHP Billiton this week acknowledged that longwall coal mining at the Appin West mine has damaged the Nepean, but claimed that the 300m long plume of methane bubbles on the river's surface was within acceptable levels of impact and that the economic benefits of mining outweigh its environmental impacts.
"Apart from releasing unmeasured amounts of methane into the atmosphere, the bubbles on the Nepean tell you that the riverbed has been cracked in numerous places below the surface," TEC spokesperson David Burgess said.
"It is hypocritical that BHP Billiton states that damage to yet another section of river in the Southern Coalfields is acceptable while espousing a global policy of zero harm to the environment.”
In the wake of the damage to the Nepean, Premier Iemma indicated that the NSW Government would investigate the incident.
"While welcoming the Premier's concern, we urge Mr Iemma to listen to what Member for Wollondilly, Phil Costa, told him this week, and also follow the recommendations of numerous NSW Government departments regarding this destructive form of mining. He should go and look at the damage to several streams for himself.”
In 2004 the Hawkesbury-Nepean River Management Forum (under the then Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources) recommended that existing impacts from longwall mining on the catchment be eliminated, while only last year the Department of Environment and Climate Change said that damage must be prevented rather than managed.
"BHP Billiton and other companies in the region are running an agenda based on weakening regulation and intensifying longwall mining across the upper Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment, much of which is Sydney’s water supply," Mr Burgess said.
