TIM PALMER: Lawyers say a group of bushwalkers has forced mining giant BHP to stop polluting a Sydney river in a case that may have wider implications for the environment.
Within three years, BHP's West and North Cliff coal mines will no longer release effluent containing heavy metals and salt into the Georges River in Sydney's west. While scientists and some environmentalists say the outcome is significant, the group that began the action is not happy, as Jo Jarvis reports:
JO JARVIS: Parts of the upper Georges River near the Campbelltown in Sydney's west are pristine, and this is in stark contrast to the area affected by BHP's pollution, according to environmental scientist Dr Ian Wright:
IAN WRIGHT: It's very clean and clear. You can see sparkling clear water and you can clearly see the bottom. You can see rocks and sticks.
JO JARVIS: And then how does it change where below BHP discharges its waste?
IAN WRIGHT: It immediately become turbid, it's very murky, you can't see the bottom. There's a fine suspended sediment everywhere.
JO JARVIS: Ian Wright was commissioned by the MacArthur Bushwalkers group to research BHP's own data on their coal mines effluent. What he found was startling.
IAN WRIGHT: That discharge was consistently highly saline, not in terms of the ocean but in terms of a freshwater section it went up by a factor of 10.
Same for humans you know, a little bit of salt's nice, but that level is - has got adverse consequences. I also found a lot of heavy metals at levels that are potentially toxic, potentially dangerous and that included aluminium, zinc, nickel, and a whole series of others.
JO JARVIS: When the results were in, lawyers for the bushwalkers went to court to stop the company polluting. Within days the New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority acknowledged the problem and began community consultations. The EPA wanted to know the community's view on the company's waste disposal practices. And the legal case was put on hold. According to lawyer for the bushwalkers Elaine Johnson, the EPA's action was significant.
ELAINE JOHNSON: The way that the EPAs dealt with this, the pollution, in this case sets a precedent for involving the community in the decision making, so actually inviting the community to come and comment on how the EPA should respond to the pollution.
This is better for the community because what it means is that they can now access data more easily and they have a case that they can point to when they're trying to become involved in pollution decisions that are made by the EPA to show, to really show that there is a precedent for involving them in that decision-making process. Whereas before that opportunity didn't exists.
JO JARVIS: And the legal view is supported by the scientist, Ian Wright.
IAN WRIGHT: It is definitely a ground-breaking decision. I'd have to say it's a bold step by the EPA. I've been very critical of them for years and the licences they have for water pollution releases. This is a big step. It is the start of the journey for cleaning up the Georges River from this mine.
JO JARVIS: But while many are happy with the outcome, the MacArthur Bushwalkers are not. The group's head Ken Hall says the EPA's decision to allow BHP to continue to pollute until 2016 was wrong.
KEN HALL: I'm not happy with the results. The major results that we wanted, we haven't achieved.
JO JARVIS: What you wanted them to stop straight away, but they're not going to stop until 2016?
KEN HALL: No, and also we wanted them to warn the public what they'd actually done to the river so that the public could be informed and make choices as to whether they use the river.
We wanted them simply to put signs up along the river basically for where the site is, where the pollution's going into the river. For a distance of 20 kilometres or more there's a number of locations where the public actually uses the river for little beaches and things like that, and parks and they actually fish, they kayak, they swim in the river, and they haven't done that.
JO JARVIS: What do you say is the impact on the public who use the river from the pollution that BHP is releasing into it?
KEN HALL: We know that the pollution actually affects the ecosystems, but nobody's actually told us what happens to the people that use it long term.
TIM PALMER: The head of MacArthur Bushwalkers Ken Hall ending Jo Jarvis' report.
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