My little town has been engulfed by an exploration license for Mantle Mining to drill core samples to see if 'it's worth' starting up an open cut brown coal mine to open an export market with India. Mantle Mining have said they think there is 1-2 Billion Tonnes of brown coal in the area - underneath the prime arable land in the area :clap: ... An info session was held last night, dpi and local govt reps attended, as did RichRd DiNatale(greens for Melbourne). Mantle Mining refused to attend(although surely had someone there taking notes). Dpi gave a presentation which focused on the fact that 1000+exploration licenses are granted each year and only one of those turns into a commercial mine site. Why would they be discussing compensation with landowners, and talking about how much coal there is in the shire and about this 'cleaner brown coal' drying process etc if they don't have a fairly solid plan to build an open cut mine in the area? Like other residents, I am scratching my head about how construction of a windfarm can be stopped by consciensious objectors, but residents have no say about what happens about this coal, simply because "minerals in the earth rightfully belong to the Crown"... Needless to say a letter writing campaign and some very loud objections are about to begin. We will have to wait and see how much power the people have against massive corporations...
G'day Sezmo (Sarah), and (a belated) welcome to the PRI Forum In case you missed it: ABC Radio Melbourne - Talkback with Premier Ted Baillieu (6 September 2011) The Premier answers questions from Jon and from listeners on a range of issues... [including] coal exploration in Bacchus Marsh Good luck with the campaign, Markos
Thanks Markos, I hadn't seen the Ted speech yet. The reporter who wrote the article for abc must've been asleep or deafened by my crying child, didn't even manage to grasp that Bacchus Marsh is West of Melbourne! https://m.smh.com.au/business/helping-hand-for-mantle-20110905-1ju5h.html
Damn, once again someone is going the easy route to screw up the planet. Stop with the coal, more teaching of green tech!!!!
G'day again, Sarah Environment Victoria have been running a Coal Watch campaign for some time now. Perhaps a study of their website (and associated links) could be of help? What I find of interest concerning the debate in general, is that Mantle walked away from their proposal to explore for coal in the Otways after a community backlash, bit still feel (apparently?) that it is viable to pursue an exploration agenda in Bacchus Marsh. Cheerio, Markos
Brown coal, that's lignite right? It's a big issue in NZ now, because we have large lignite deposits and there are moves to turn it into diesel, fertiliser, and briquettes. It's completely insane, and evidence that peak oil is approaching fast. I would have less of a problem with it if we were going to use the lignite to prepare for peak oil, but instead we're going to waste it.
I will have a good read of that coal info. Pebble, I'm not sure if it is lignite, but ATM there is a small mining operation which uses the brown coal to produce fertilizer (in itself a bit of a ?**! idea) but what mantle want to do is dry it, so it's not hyperflammable, then export it to India to burn for electricity. This increases its value from that of regular brown coal too. Hopefully we can learn from Deans Marsh and the Otways campaign and raise enough public objection to stop it...
Yep, that's it. Removing the water produces a briquette. In our case, it's so that the dairy monopoly Fonterra can fire it's milk drying plants, and then they can export the milk powder to China. https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1101/S00087/briquette-plant-a-crime-of-global-significance.htm
so why are we little ole' aus' going this carbon tax industry way? makes it even more futile. up here they have plotted all coal deposits from the sunshine coast to the tablelands, their intention is to run our economy largely on coal mining. len