Kangaloon Aquifer

Ms PRU GOWARD (Goulburn) [4.57 p.m.]: I bring to the attention of the House the Kangaloon aquifer and my electorate's concerns that the New South Wales Government is proceeding with a project that does not stack up either economically or environmentally. The aquifer spreads through the Southern Highlands, and a treatment works is being planned for Mittagong. This project is expected to provide an estimated seven days supply of water for the metropolitan area and will cost the taxpayer, or water user, upwards of $80 million. That works out at a cost per litre of approximately 0.7¢, about four times as much per litre as Sydney Water currently charges the hapless residents of metropolitan Sydney—an extremely expensive way to give Sydney an extra supply.

This back-of-the-envelope arithmetic should be noted by all members who represent metropolitan electorates, and who will need to explain that part of the increase in water charges. But it is the environmental impact of mining this aquifer I address today. As most members who have been to the Southern Highlands know, it is a beautiful area, blessed with wonderful rainfall and magnificent woodlands. It has forests of gums hundreds of metres high and a depth of green not often seen in sun-bleached Australia. But there is now fear throughout the highlands—from farmers, townspeople, green groups, the elderly and schoolchildren—that this might all change. And what underlines this fear is the lack of evidence for proceeding.

In particular, we just do not know enough about the environmental impacts to be able to go ahead and mine this area with any confidence that the local environment will survive. Once a swamp is dead and those giant gums are dead, they will not come back. Once a dairy farmer has gone broke because there is no water left in his or her bore, and a farmer's lucerne crops fail, a whole community starts to change, to wither and die. It is true that the Government has provided an environmental assessment report based on test trials since 2005. The trouble is, my communities have no confidence in them. The most recent Technical Services Report to the Wingecarribee Shire Council in the Southern Highlands states:

Sustained long term monitoring within a period of average seasonal and climatic variation has not been achieved. The claims that sufficient monitoring has been performed and which support the idea the project is sustainable are rejected.

The people of my electorate might be more disposed to this project if its so-called purpose, to drought proof Sydney, could be proven. However, they believe that to be far from the case. There is a strong view that other options such as better demand management, stormwater harvesting or recycling should be explored and exhausted before alternatives such as bore field extractions are imposed on unwilling communities in what is left of Sydney's green belt. I note from an answer by the Minister for Water in question time yesterday that the Government is investing in stormwater harvesting and recycling this year and with any luck that investment will obviate the need to spend $80 million on a project in the Southern Highlands with such huge question marks hanging over it. The Minister must be encouraged.

To go ahead with a project possessed of such manifestly significant question marks means it fails the first test of sustainable policy: it fails the precautionary principle test. Government members might recall that their argument for investing billions of dollars in climate change abatement and mitigation is also based on the precautionary principle test. And again I refer to the limited assessment period over a period of great climate variation—from drought to flooding rains—all in the space of one six-month period. That was just the climate. Also we know very little about the impact on vegetation and on the fractured sandstone that forms the aquifers in the area. In longwall mining, that sandstone can crack and leak. However, that is not mentioned in discussions about the aquifer.

Perhaps that is why the Government's environmental assessment report used the terms "unlikely", "considered" and "anticipated". In other words, the report is admitting to only a guess at these impacts. A couple of comments stand out from that report, "difficulty in accurately detecting" and "the shape of the final drawdown pattern is difficult to accurately predict because of the complexity of fractured rock aquifers and three-dimensional underground flow". Well, no wonder my community is uneasy about the Government's claims that this project is environmentally sustainable—they can read.

One might well ask if it is the same report that the Government read. It is this gulf that undermines public confidence in State government, and this Government in particular. I call upon the new Minister to review the evidence openly and without prejudice. The people of the Southern Highlands deserve no less.