How the State Government Permitted a Water Management Disaster - To Defraud a Rural Community and the Environment: Executive Summary

Executive Summary

The open cut limestone mine at East End (Mt Larcom, central Queensland) has been subject to dewatering since its inception in 1979. A detailed water monitoring program set up for the project has demonstrated increasingly widespread and serious aquifer depletion, with loss of surface streams and associated environmental degradation.

Inaction by the relevant State Government Department(s) to take cognizance of early warning signs has been followed by false assumptions and misleading interpretations, aimed at distorting the true picture. Thus, the State Government has been proactive both in the denial of the extent of the environmental impacts and in the denial of its duty-of-care with regard to the rural communities of East End and Bracewell.

At some time in the future, cessation of mining activities is expected to leave the mine as an abandoned open cut. Evaporation from the extensive pit will be of the same order of magnitude as the initial dewatering rates, ensuring that the presently depleted aquifers and the dried-out streams will never recover.

This report outlines the history of the project and details the manner in which the relevant Government Department(s) has shielded the extent and seriousness of the environmental damage.