ANTI-mining campaigners have declared the only way to protect the Liverpool Plains from further coal mining is to “barrage our local state member”.
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More than 100 demonstrators marched from Jewry Street Bridge to Bicentennial Park, Tamworth, on Sunday morning in a stand against the new Shenhua and Adani coal mines.
It follows the NSW government’s $262m buy back of half of Shenhua Watermark coal mine’s exploration licence on the Liverpool Plains last month.
Caroona Coal Action Group chair Susan Lyle told the demonstration that the recent decision does little to protect the food bowl.
“It is the same mine in the same place, the same size, the same impacts,” she said.
“The impacts being the surface and ground water, the effects of the dust, salt, the destruction of the koala, and very importantly, the indigenous sacred sites.”
Shenhua Australia chairman Liu Xiang said in a statement at the time of the buy back of the mine had been “subject to unprecedented scrutiny which has demonstrated the project can be developed in an environmentally sustainable manner”.
Mrs Lyle implored the public to take up the fight with their state and federal MPs.
“We are fed up, but I can tell you, we will never, ever give up,” she said.
Local ecologist Phil Spark addressed the crowd on stopping the Adani mine in Queensland, before Manilla Solar’s Emma Stilts spoke on renewable energy as as a solution. Shenhua was contacted for comment.