Mark Willacy reported this story on Monday, May 12, 2014 18:10:00

MARK COLVIN: The ABC has learned that the Queensland Government sided with the developer of Australia's biggest coal mining project to dismiss serious environmental concerns raised by a Commonwealth advisory body. The Newman Government last week approved the $16 billion Carmichael mine in central Queensland, proposed by the Indian giant Adani. Now it's up to the Commonwealth to back either the state or its own advisers.



The Independent Expert Scientific Committee was set up to advise state and federal government on the impact of big coal projects on water supplies. It's raised concerns about the mine's potential effects on endangered springs and the Great Artesian Basin. But the Newman government says it should be ignored.



Mark Willacy reports.



MARK WILLACY: Its scale is staggering: six open-cut pits and up to five underground mines, ranging over 200 square kilometres of central Queensland's Galilee Basin. And, according to Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, the $16 billion Carmichael mega-mine would be a jobs bonanza for the state.



CAMPBELL NEWMAN: That will see 2,500 jobs created during construction, and 3,900 operational jobs created.



MARK WILLACY: The mine's developer is the Indian giant Adani, and its proposed Carmichael project would produce about 60 million tonnes of coal a year. But to its opponents, like Drew Hutton from the anti-mining group Lock the Gate, the mine would pose a terrible threat to the environment, particularly to the region's precious water supplies.



DREW HUTTON: That's water that local communities are dependent on, that the cattle growers our there are dependent upon. And we're just condemning it to be either contaminated or lost.



MARK WILLACY: And those concerns about water have been echoed by the Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Mining Developments.



This Commonwealth committee was set up two years ago to advise state and federal governments about the impact of mining projects on water. In particular, the committee found that some of the data provided by Adani was insufficient, adding that it had little confidence in the company's modelling.



The ABC has obtained the 150 page response by Adani to the committee's concerns. It reveals that Adani rejected the committee's worries about the impact of the mine on the Great Artesian Basin, as well as some of the complex springs and aquifers it feeds.



But not only did the Indian company dismiss the independent committee's concerns, so too did the Queensland Government, which approved the Carmichael mining project late last week. In giving it the green light, the state government hired its own expert, who argued that some of the independent committee's concerns should be ignored describing other points it raised as being false.



Premier Campbell Newman.



CAMPBELL NEWMAN: Well there are different views on these things all the time. But I can assure people that all the necessary conditions to protect the environment are there. And that decision is there for all to see. There are hundreds of pages of conditions.



MARK WILLACY: But environmentalists, like Lock the Gate's Drew Hutton, say the conditions are based on flawed science designed for the benefit of one business and one business alone.



DREW HUTTON: The Newman government has said, 'We're in the coal business, we're not here to knock back any project, no matter how poor their environmental impacts assessment is, no matter how significant the social and environmental impacts are likely to be.'



MARK WILLACY: Premier Newman is unapologetic.



CAMPBELL NEWMAN: I have said famously, or infamously, that we are in the coal business. I again reiterate that today.



MARK WILLACY: Drew Hutton from the anti-mining Lock the Gate group says the approval process for the Carmichael Mine project now moves from the Queensland government to the Commonwealth.



DREW HUTTON: It is their committee. I mean it is there independent committee that's full of the best brains in this country when it comes to knowledge about water, not the donkeys up here in Queensland who simply tick off every half-baked project that comes before them.



MARK WILLACY: PM approached Adani for comment but we received no response.



MARK COLVIN: Mark Willacy.