"When you consider that the federal government and the federal agency utilised a number of weeks to be able to assess the CSIRO and Geoscience report, it is only fair that we would allow [Queensland's] regulator to do the same," she said. There are many reasons to think the process will be drawn out a while yet - including beyond the federal election. According to the federal government, there are 15 plans to sign-off, although the number narrows to about eight if only the matters requiring approval before mining operations are counted. That tally, though, excludes ongoing legal challenges. The Environmental Defenders Office in Queensland has hearing dates set for June 27-28 for its challenge - on behalf of the Australian Conservation Foundation - over Minister Price's handling of the approval process for the North Galilee Water Scheme.

That project is supposed to deliver as much as 12.5 billion litres of water a year from the Suttor River in central Queensland, but was approved without requiring a full environmental assessment under the so-called water trigger. Loading For now, though, the focus is on how the Queensland government will assess the groundwater-dependent ecosystem management and the black-throated finch management plans. Lucas Dow, the chief executive of Adani Mining, indicated on Tuesday that the state government will be the target of lobbying efforts. “The independent evaluation and endorsement by CSIRO and Geoscience Australia verifies that the

measures outlined in the plans will ensure groundwater at the mine, and the ecosystems that depend on it, are protected," he said in a statement, adding that it will drill more than 100 monitoring bores to track underground water levels.

While the 18-month process at the federal level had proceeded with a "certainty of process and

timing", the Queensland government had "continued to shift the goal posts when it comes to

finalising the outstanding environmental management plans for the mine and is standing in the way of thousands of jobs for Queenslanders". A key difference, though, will be that the Queensland environment and science department - and not Minister Enoch - will be making the decision on both the groundwater assessment and plans to protect the endangered black-throated finch. "The conditions for approval at a federal level aren't as strong and mandatory as the conditions of approval at the state level," Jo-Anne Bragg, the chief executive of EDO, says. Moreover, the concerns the CSIRO and Geoscience raised and how they were treated will likely come under close legal scrutiny by both the state government and environment groups. Buried in the CSIRO groundwater review, for instance, are a series of concerns about how the huge open-pit coal mine will affect the nationally significant Doongmabulla Springs.

Just what will happen to the Rewan and Clematis formations remains uncertain, including whether a "red line" reduction of water levels of 0.2 metres will be crossed. "The sensitivity analysis shows that if either of [the hydraulic conductivity of the two formations] were changed to their expected values then the drawdown at the springs would be greater than 0.2 metres," the CSIRO said. "If both were changed it would be greater again." Adani's response is given in the report as the model review was "outside scope/objective" of the plan. However, Carmel Flint, a national coordinator of the Lock the Gate alliance, said the CSIRO doubts of the impact were "a bombshell in the document". Despite those concerns, a briefing by the federal environment department on April 5 and a yet-to-be-released summary of "actions agreed to by Adani", were enough to defuse both CSIRO and Geoscience Australia's misgivings.

"CSIRO is of the view that Adani's responses should satisfy the recommendation to update the ground water models," the agency said, according to a three-paragraph letter sent hours after the briefing. "We don't know who was in the room, what information was provided and how long they met for and we don't even know what's in the final plan itself," Tim Beshara, federal policy director of The Wilderness Society, said. "But what we do know is that having agencies being rushed into signing off on opinions based on verbal briefings is bizarre in the extreme," he said. "And we do know that senior government figures were reported in the media making political threats to the Minister around this approval, Mr Beshara said, a pressure that Minister Enoch said on Tuesday she was "very concerned about". The EDO's Ms Bragg said the state government's task of assessing Adani includes a host of other approvals that relate to early-stage preparation of the mine - such as monitoring existing conditions - and a more detailed list of activities such as land-clearing that needs to be ticked off before the first ounce of coal is extracted.