Antinuclear

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) and provided to the ABC by activist group Lock the Gate Alliance showed the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources wrote to the Environment Department suggesting the project could activate what is known as the “water trigger”………

Action will ‘clearly have an impact on water resources’The principal solicitor at the Queensland Environmental Defenders Office, Sean Ryan, said the Environment Department should explain how it came to its decision to not require a full environmental assessment.

“It is concerning when these significant environmental laws are not applied to an action that clearly will have a significant impact on water resources,” he said.

Carmel Flint from the Lock the Gate Alliance said she was astounded by the situation.

“We were really shocked to see that these documents had given some pretty clear advice to the department that there was a serious risk to water resources and that they ignored that and pushed thorough the Adani project without requiring an environmental impact assessment,” she said.

“So it just raises real questions about what’s going on inside government.

“We’ve got a department who has this key role of looking after water and agriculture basically raising this concern, saying they consider there would be a significant impact on water resources, and they’ve effectively been overruled.

“That’s just not good enough.”……….

Ms Flint is calling on Environment Minister Melissa Price to act.

“We’re really calling for the Minister now to urgently step in and reverse the decision and require a proper environmental impact assessment and fully apply the water trigger,” she said.

“We’d also really like to know how it was that this advice came to be ignored by the Department for Environment.”………https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-07/adani-water-project-bypassed-full-assessment-against-advice/10457670