Friends of the Earth Adelaide

Don’t let South Australia become the world’s largest uranium exporter! Don’t let BHP Billiton dig the world’s largest open pit mine, create the world’s largest radioactive tailings dam, consume over 250 million litres of water a day, and add 10-15% to our state’s total greenhouse gas emissions!

The draft Environmental Impact Statement for BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine expansion has been released. The public have until August 7 to make their concerns known through a formal submission to the EIS. You can read the EIS here, or drop in to the Conservation Council of SA (Level 1/ 157 Franklin St, Adelaide) to view a copy. Get in touch with us for more information about making a submission. 

Written submissions need to be made to:
The Minister for Urban Development and Planning
Att: Manager, Assessment Branch, Department of Planning and Local Government
GPO Box 1815
Adelaide SA 5001.

Mark Parnell MLC has prepared a useful overview of the project. Friends of the Earth Adelaide is currently working with a range of community organisations to prepare our response.

FoE Adelaide marched with 1,500 others on the streets of Adelaide on June 13 demanding that the government treat climate change as an urgent and serious emergency situation. Like other environmental organisations, political parties and trade unions present on the day, we completely reject the Federal government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, and call for an immediate transition to sustainable, green jobs through the renewable energy sector. We also had a speaker in the climate festival that followed, who alerted the audience to the difficulties in making any progress to reduce our state’s emissions if the expansion of the Roxby Downs mine goes ahead.

This is an edited version of a speech delivered by Joel Catchlove at Politics in the Pub, Prince Albert Hotel, 18 May 2009.

A Food System in Crisis
As my partner Sophie and I travelled through North America last year, every time we would finish our time on a farm and come back to the city, we were unnerved by a growing sense that things were falling apart. Arriving in Phoenix, Arizona, we heard of a salmonella outbreak linked to tomatoes. For months, nobody could figure out where it came from. In fact, the supply chain was so long, and so anonymous that it was difficult to figure out where the tomatoes had even been grown. Were they being contaminated on a single farm in Mexico or California or somewhere else, or were tomatoes cross-contaminating each other when they were stored in any number of warehouses throughout the continent? Or were the truck that chauffeured them around the country somehow implicated? Tomato consumption fell through the floor and tomato growers began to fret. Shops had warning signs in the fresh produce section, reminding buyers to thoroughly cook any purchases. Then they discovered that chillis had salmonella too. Read the rest of this entry »

Media Release, 1 May 2009

A technical assessment by Monash University engineering lecturer Dr Gavin Mudd reveals that the proposed Olympic Dam mine expansion will make it almost impossible for South Australia to meet its legislated target of a 60% reduction in greenhouse emissions. The technical assessment – which finds that emissions from the mine will rise from one million tonnes to 4.5-6.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually - is being released today to coincide with BHP Billiton’s release of an EIS for the mine expansion.

Dr Mudd said: “South Australia has a legislated target to reduce greenhouse emissions by 60%, limiting total emissions to 13 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually by 2050. Yet the Olympic Dam mine alone will produce one-third to one-half of that total, making it almost impossible for South Australia to meet its target.

“BHP Billiton wants to take credit for its export of uranium to fuel low-carbon nuclear power reactors, but that argument is flawed on two counts. Firstly, the end uses of energy exports are not counted in Australia’s greenhouse emissions, and if they were, BHP Billiton would also need to account for its extensive fossil fuel exports. Secondly, the argument rests on the arbitrary and implausible assumption that the only alternative to Olympic Dam uranium exports is to build coal fired power plants,” Dr Mudd said.

Today’s release of the EIS will be marked by protests at the company’s offices in Melbourne and Adelaide. Dr Jim Green, Friends of the Earth’s national nuclear campaigner, said: “BHP Billiton plans to increase the export of uranium from 4,000 tonnes per year to 19,000 tonnes. In power reactors, that amount of uranium would produce enough plutonium to build 2,850 nuclear weapons each year. Over the lifespan of the mine, it could be responsible for the production of enough plutonium for over 340,000 nuclear weapons. This is an unacceptable risk given Prime Minister Rudd’s acknowledgement that “the nuclear non-proliferation treaty continues to fracture”.*

“BHP Billiton sells uranium to nuclear weapons states, states refusing to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, states blocking progress on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, states with a history of secret nuclear weapons research, and states stockpiling ‘civil’ plutonium. A new low was set in 2006 when the federal government, with BHP Billiton’s support, negotiated a uranium export agreement with the secretive, repressive, militaristic, undemocratic regime in China. The Olympic Dam expansion plan is heavily predicated on sales to China, including the proposed annual export of 1.6 million tonnes of uranium/copper concentrate to China for processing there.

“The company has not been required to study the viability of mining copper, gold and silver without also extracting and selling uranium - an option which would allow for ongoing, profitable mining while addressing at least some of the major problems,” Dr Green said.

Adelaide: Protest & mock launch of the EIS, BHP Billiton office, Grenfell St, May 1, 2pm onwards,

Contact: Gavin Mudd 0419 117494. Jim Green 0417 318 368.

Dr Mudd’s technical assessment is available here.

More information on the mine expansion plan is available here.

MEDIA RELEASE 23/10/08With today’s Annual General Meeting of BHP Billiton in London coinciding with National Water Week in Australia, anti-nuclear campaigners are protesting outside the company’s Melbourne office calling on it to address its outrageous water profligacy and mismanagement at the Roxby Downs uranium mine.Friends of the Earth nuclear campaigner Jim Green said: “The daily extraction of 35 million litres of Great Artesian Basin water for the Roxby mine has destroyed some of the precious Mound Springs and adversely impacted on others. Friends of the Earth has monitored this destruction over several decades in conjunction with Arabunna Traditional Owners. BHP Billiton should be forced to pay for the water it uses – it is unacceptable that the company pays nothing for its massive water take despite recently posting a record A$22.4 billion profit.”The SA Roxby Downs Indenture Act provides BHP Billiton the legal authority to override important state legislation including the Water Resources Act 1997. These legal exemptions and overrides should be repealed. Federal environment minister Peter Garrett and water minister Penny Wong should ensure that their South Australian colleagues act on the anachronistic practices at Roxby Downs.Mia Pepper from the Roxstop Action Group added: “There have been numerous spills and leaks at Roxby Downs, the largest being a leak of five billion litres from the tailings dams in the 1990s. Birds drink from the tailings dam and drop dead – a 2004 study recorded more than 100 bird deaths over a four-day period. Mining consultants noted in a 2004 report that radioactive slurry was deposited off a lined area of a tailings pond requiring ‘urgent remedial measures’.”Massive, unsustainable water extraction at no cost; serious, adverse impacts on the precious and fragile Mound Spring ecosystems; inadequate management; indefensible legal privileges and exemptions –could BHP Billiton possibly be setting a worse example in National Water Week?”All to mine WMD feedstock to flog off to untrustworthy nuclear weapons states such as those in Russia and China,” Ms Pepper concluded.Contact:Jim Green – Friends of the Earth – 0417 318 368Mia Pepper – Roxstop Action Group – 0415 380 808

September 27th

Parliament House, North Terrace, Adelaide

11am with speakers at approximately 11.30am

Join Friends of the Earth Adelaide to remember the injustice of Australia’s nuclear past, to protest the environmental, social and economic impacts of our nuclear present and to call for a nuclear free future.

Featuring box wall art from the ex-a-sketch crew and speakers including Maralinga veteran Avon Hudson and ACF Nuclear Free campaigner David Noonan.

FoE Australia Media Release – August 2008

Hydrogeologist Dr Gavin Mudd has today condemned environment minister Peter Garrett’s decision to approve a six-fold expansion of the Beverley in-situ leach (ISL) uranium mine in SA and to allow the dumping of liquid mine waste directly into groundwater.

Dr Mudd, a lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering at Monash University, said: “My review of the available literature across the world dispels the myths promulgated by ISL uranium mining companies. It is not an environmentally benign method of uranium mining – it is inherently risky and is unlikely to meet ‘strict environmental controls’. The ISL technique treats ground water as a sacrifice zone and the problem remains ‘out of sight, out of mind”.

” Liquid radioactive waste – containing radioactive particles, heavy metas and acid – is simply dumped in groundwater. From being inert and immobile in the ore body, the radionuclides and heavy metals are now bioavailable and mobile in the aquifer,” Dr Mudd said.

Peter Burdon from Friends of the Earth Adelaide, said: “Heathgate Resources, a subsidiary of US-based General Atomics, has a poor record in Australia. The SA government’s Department of Primary Industry and Resources lists 59 spills at Beverley from 1998-2007.

“Heathgate has a track record of secrecy, such as its failure to publicly acknowledge a series of leaks before the 2002 SA state election and its refusal to release key environmental reports until the South Australian Ombudsman found that its commercial-in-confidence claims were spurious.”

Mr Burdon also warned of the nuclear weapons proliferation risks of Beverley’s operations: “During a visit to the Beverley mine in April 2008, Heathgate representatives had no idea which organisations are responsible for nuclear safeguards or what safeguards actually involve. In fact, so-called safeguards are totally inadequate. For example, the government is currently considering permitting uranium exports to Russia despite the face that there have been no safeguards inspections of Russia’s nuclear facilities since 1994.”

Contact: Dr Gavin Mudd 0419 117 494; Peter Burdon 0439 294 386