Lawyers representing landholders in the footprint of the proposed Waratah Coal mine say a recent court decision has stopped them from objecting to it in the Queensland Land Court on the basis of the mine's groundwater use.

Key points: Objecting to a mining lease on the basis of groundwater consumption and impact is no longer allowed

Objecting to a mining lease on the basis of groundwater consumption and impact is no longer allowed Landholders are objecting against the Clive Palmer's Waratah mine on environmental, social, and economic grounds

Landholders are objecting against the Clive Palmer's Waratah mine on environmental, social, and economic grounds Objectors are worried there will not be proper scrutiny of new mining applications

Waratah Coal, owned by Queensland billionaire Clive Palmer, is the proponent behind the Galilee Coal and Rail Project which was approved, with conditions, by the Federal Environment Department in 2013 and promises to mine 40 million tonnes of thermal coal each year.

The proposed mine is significantly larger than the nearby Adani Carmichael Mine, which will produce 10 million tonnes of coal a year.

The Waratah mine's application had sat dormant since 2013 until October this year when the company applied for a Mining Lease and Environmental Authority with the Queensland Government.

But the objection to the mining lease application will not be able to focus on the use of 768 billion litres, or 768 gigalitres, of groundwater over its 30-year lifespan of the proposed mine, equating to one-and-a-half times the volume of Sydney Harbour.

Sean Ryan, principal solicitor at the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO), which is representing the farmers, said a decision by the Queensland Court of Appeal had set a precedent that stopped landholders from objecting to some mine proposals on the basis of groundwater concerns, meaning groundwater has been excluded from their objection.

In September, the Court of Appeal ruled a long-running dispute over the New Acland coal mining lease near Toowoomba did not have to return to the Land Court as requested by a local Coal Action Alliance.

Mr Ryan said when landholders or concerned citizens objected to the Land Court, they now could not argue the impacts of the groundwater take on their farm use.

"This is a decision in the Court of Appeal, which is the highest court in Queensland, so that is binding on all lower courts including the Land Court and Supreme Court — so it's a very strong precedent," he said.

"In previous cases like in relation to Xstrata's Wandoan mine, or the Alpha mine, or the Adani mine, groundwater was considered in the mining objection period in the Land Court in relation to those approvals."

Mr Ryan said the judgement only applied to mines lodged before 2014, which included Waratah's Galilee Coal Project.

The Oakey Coal Action Alliance is appealing the Queensland Court of Appeal decision on the New Ackland mine in the High Court of Australia.

As the New Acland case may now be heard by the High Court, the Department of Justice and Attorney-General was unable to comment on the issue.

Mr Ryan said the case would now argue the mine's Environmental Authority application should be refused on 11 grounds, including that the mine would cause environmental harm and not be ecologically sustainable.

It has also lodged 12 grounds for objection to the company's mining lease application saying it would cause adverse environmental, social and, economic impacts.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Queensland Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy said all applications that come before the department were assessed against relevant legislation, and that legal precedents were a matter for the courts.

Queensland Mines Minister Anthony Lynham said Waratah Coal would have to meet all of Queensland's environmental and financial requirements for a mining lease to be granted.

Mr Palmer and Waratah Coal have not responded to the ABC's requests for comment on the mine's proposed water requirements.

768 gigalitres of groundwater to flow into mine over lifetime

Locations of Galilee Basin mining leases.

The use of groundwater was to be one of the key objections to the mining lease by Waratah Coal.

State Government documents show 25.6 gigalitres of groundwater would flow into the project's mines each year.

That equates to a total of 768 gigalitres of groundwater over its 30-year lifespan.

For scale, the nearby proposed China Stone Coal Project, which has since been put on hold, would have created an inflow of just 5.84 gigalitres per year in producing a comparable 38 million tonnes of coal per annum.

When Waratah Coal submitted its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to the State Government in 2011 it estimated those inflows to be significantly less, at just 12.3 gigalitres per annum.

But in the 2013 evaluation report of the EIS, the Coordinator-General concluded that the inflows would be significantly greater than initial estimates and have the potential to drop groundwater levels by 10 metres.

"The surface and underground voids could act as groundwater sinks and could cause a temporary change in groundwater flow direction until mining is completed and the groundwater system recovers to a new equilibrium," the Coordinator-General wrote.

"This is a significant upwards revision of inflows compared to the findings of the EIS and work done for other Galilee mine projects where a fractured zone was not modelled in all cases."

The mine is one of seven proposed for the Galilee Basin.

In 2018 the Australian Government published a holistic assessment of the impacts on the Galilee subregion if all seven proposed Galilee Basin coal mines are approved.

It assessed that 14,030 square kilometres of land and 6,285 kilometres of streams could see cumulative hydrological impacts as a result of their development.

Bimblebox Nature Refuge sits within the proposed Waratah Coal Mine footprint. ( Facebook: Bimblebox Nature Refuge )

'When you've lost your groundwater, you've lost it'

Jericho grazier Paola Cassoni is part of the group objecting to the Waratah Coal mine, because her farm is in the proposed mine's footprint.

Paola Cassoni is a grazier and co-owner of the Bimblebox Nature Refuge in central Queensland, and has lodged an objection to Waratah Coal's Mining Lease Application with the Land Court. ( ABC News: Melanie Vujkovic )

She is also a co-owner of the Bimblebox Nature Refuge, an 8,000-hectare semi-arid native woodland that is home to around 150 species of birds and other animals, which is also in the path of the mine.

She said habitat destruction was a major concern for the group, but so was groundwater.

"When you've lost your groundwater, you've lost it. It doesn't matter how many make-good agreements you sign, you've lost it," she said.

She said around her property, bores were drying up due to drought with the last significant rain falling in March 2018.

"We don't have our regular rains anymore. In the summer when we expect our rains it just doesn't quite come anymore," Ms Cassoni said.

Ms Cassoni was concerned the new precedent meant mining applications would not be able to be as closely scrutinised.

"We need to band together and be able to make sure that there is proper scrutiny of the modelling that the mining companies are proposing to us," she said.

"It needs to be tested, and tested in the court of law, and that's all there is to it.

"If we don't have any way for the groundwater [concerns] to be heard, where are we going?"