How many times and in how many ways does the NSW Government have to be told before they admit they are wrong?

The majority of local residents and farmers don’t want this coal mine, a number of experts have been warning against it for years - yet still the NSW Government doesn’t appear willing to genuinely protect the water resources, agricultural assets and biodiversity values of the Liverpool Plains food bowl.

Here is the latest plea to go public.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 August 2017:

Claims that Shenhua's restricted coal mining will avoid affecting the aquifers of the rich farmlands of the Liverpool Plains are "false and ignorant", former state and private agronomists have said in a letter to Premier Gladys Berejiklian. 

The government last month paid the Chinese coal miner $262 million for just over half the exploration licence area of the proposed mine at Watermark in northern NSW. Energy Minister Don Harwin said the buyback would ensure there was no mining on the fertile black soils of the plains.

But the agronomists, five of whom worked for the Department of Primary Industries or precursor departments, said limiting the proposed open cut mine to ridges would still likely affect surface and groundwater flows in the plains and downstream regions.

"The claim that mining the ridges above Breeza will not have an impact on farming operations is false and ignorant," the letter's authors said.

"Hydrogeological investigations have shown that there is a high degree of connectivity between the alluvial aquifers throughout the Namoi Valley."

Brian Tomalin, a retired cattle farmer and a former Namoi Catchment Management board member, told Fairfax Media endangered ecological communities such as whitebox woodlands were also at risk from impacts of an open pit reaching as deep as 300 metres.