Julie Sheppard speaking at Catact Dam on 21st February 2015, at the start of the Walk 4 Water event.

Transcription:

To some extent, this is a symbolic thing we that we are doing here today. We are symbolicly drawing water from the reservoir down below, and taking it all the way to parliament house.

We are trying to send a message to our, this current government, and any government, that what is going on in our water catchment, especially Sydney Water catchments special areas, is totally and utterly unacceptable.

Why do I speak about this with such authority? I've seen it. Over the last ten years I have been out in the catchments seeing the damage that these mines are causing on a daily basis. The mines are ripping the coal out as fast as they possibly can, 365 days a year, 24/7, they never stop, and its all undermining our catchment and affecting the integrity of that catchment for water supply.

When I drove over here, I live further west, over near Camden, it wasn't raining this morning, and I hit the rain as I came up along the Appin Road. It always rains here when it doesn't rain further west. This is the area of high and reliable rainfall. This is where our forefathers, with wonderful wisdom and foresight, set aside these areas specifically for water supply. They built between the wars, the dams of the Upper Nepean scheme, the Cataract, Caudauex and Upper Nepean dams and also the Woronora dam.

Now if you come here today from the Illawarra, or from the Macarthur region where I live, this is where your water comes from. We do not drink the water from Warragamba Dam. This is a little known fact. Even our local member, Jai Rowell, didn't know that. He got up in Parliament and talked about how the CSG was going to effect the water in Warragamba that his family drank. I had to inform him when I next saw him, that that wasn't the case. It's been a continual job to inform politicians. Kay Osbourne whose been here today was telling me just yesterday that she was talking to a politician in the Illawarra, who didn't know, or claimed not to know, that they were undermining the catchments, full stop. The thing is, our catchments are out of sight, out of mind. You can't walk in there. You can't go down there, beyond these public areas, or anywhere in the special areas which are the inner sanctums, without incurring up to a forty four thousand dollar fine.

But the mining companies, these three big multinational mining companies : Peabody Energy, from America, the biggest mining company in the world; Wollongong Coal , now called Wollongong Coal but it used to be called Gudjirat NRE, a wholly owned Indian company. They take the coal out of this Cateract catchment, and they ship it off to India, without even bothering to wash it. That is to separate the impurities. They take the whole lot. Off it goes to India. I guess that we might get it back in terms of steel that they make in India, because we don't make much steel in Australia any more. And then of course, BHP. They are undermining the catchments of the Avon and the Cordeaux dams. If you come from Wollongong, your sole water supply is from the Avon Dam. Up in Macarthur, our sole water supply is a combination of the waters from those four dams, the Avon, Cataract, Cordeaux and Nepean. If you come from south of the Georges River in the Sutherland Shire, then all the way down to Helensburg, then your water supply is from the Woronora Dam. All of these areas are being trashed as we speak.

A lot of people will say, “we've always had mining in the catchments, what are you going on about?”. Especially people from Wollongong who come from old mining families. I know that. In fact the mine that is impacting on the Cataract catchment now, is the oldest mine in the state. But the old forms of mining were nothing like the modern forms of mining. They weren't nearly as intensive, and therefore as damaging on the surface features, such as the rivers and the swamps that feed these dams. The current forms of mining are incredibly intensive. They take out massive panels of coal from under the ground, and all of that section thats taken out just collapses. There are no pit props anymore. Pit props don't exist. In the old days they'd prop everything up and you'd have all these chasms that were left. They didn't collapse, or they certainly didn't collapse in the short term, and they weren't as deep as the ones they are mining now, as high. All of the damage that is happening now is due to intensive long wall mining, and its only getting more intensive, as they try to rip out more coal, and make more money on a daily basis, before the world finally says, let's stop mining coal. All this coal is unfortunately not for power generation, its for steel.

Steel is an industry, unfortunately, where they still need coal to fire the blast furnaces. They haven't actually perfected what yet seems to be perhaps an economic way to do it, [ without coal ] . Well that is what they are saying. They haven't been forced to. Its too cheap to use coal. Its like everything. If they can get away with as long as they can do it the cheap way, they will do it without bothering about looking at alternatives. We see this all the time.

Anyway, its an absolute no brainer. Why would you keep doing this? Anybody that sees the damage, like I see it, because I belong to a committee called a “community consultative committee”. This ticks the box where they have to consult the public, these miners. You go on these committees, and one of the perks, I suppose, its a dubious privilege that you get, is that you go out, and you get to see the damage. And I see this damage, day in, day out, when I go and walk these catchments, with these companies. We also go out and walk these catchments with the catchment authority, because I don't believe what the companies show me. I have great doubt that they show us all the damage. I know they don't because we have found other damage that they haven't reported, by going out on independent inspections.

Then you see that damage, when you see the dried up and cracked river beds, the dried and cracked swamps, the desiccated swamps. The cliff falls, the massive cliff falls. Massive house sized boulders that have gone tumbling down from the cliffs. You see the gas venting in waters that are still there, but now polluted, and gas pouring from the busted up rubble underground. All of this is just absolutely shocking. It is dramatic to the point where, when I first saw it, when I first saw the damage on scale that I couldn't just do anything about, that was on Waratah rivulet in 2006. Its just if you don't see it, you don't believe it. I've taken local politicians out there, like Jai Rowell, my local member, and I think I have convinced him that this is something that shouldn't be happening. Unfortunately he is not here today, which I'm going to be castigating him about, when I see him next. The thing is, no government can let this keep happening. Labor and Liberal governments have been guilty of it, in the past, of allowing it to happen. Its a no brainer. We want to send a message by our walk this week, to all politicians, to all candidates, that this is not acceptable in the Sydney drinking water catchments, in the 21^st century. Thank you.