.TonyHWindsor: This drying continent can't afford Adani's pipeline to 12.5 billion litres of precious water
Having lived next to the Liverpool Plains and farmed in that region for many years, I’m only too aware of the ravages of drought and declining water resources on much of the Murray-Darling Basin.
Right now, federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley is considering whether to require expert scientific assessment of Adani’s massive river pipeline, through which it plans to take up to 12.5 billion litres of water from the Suttor River in Central Queensland.The key question for the minister is whether she will apply the "water trigger", an element of our national environmental law that I was instrumental in developing during my time in Federal Parliament.
It could also set a very bad precedent of allowing mining companies to carve up their projects into smaller pieces to escape scrutiny. Splitting off components of a mining proposal and assessing them in isolation makes a nonsense of the process. You don’t see much looking at just one piece of the jigsaw – you need to look at the whole puzzle.
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