Groups call for Victorian coal mine operators to pay for rehabilitation water
The heart of Victoria's coal-fired power industry, the region is home to three large coal mines that are collectively more than four times the size of Sydney Harbour.
Those mines are in the process of closing as Victoria phases out coal power.
The first, Hazelwood, closed in 2017, with the Yallourn mine to follow in 2028, and the last, Loy Yang, set to close in 2035.
As part of their rehabilitation strategies, their owners plan to fill the mines with water and turn them into lakes.
In doing so, the companies are relying on international cases of rehabilitation, such as the Ruhr Valley in Germany, and Lake Kepwari in Western Australia as examples of best practice.
Power companies are required to present their rehabilitation strategies to the Victorian government for approval to ensure that they are safe and stable for the long term.
But proposals to draw the water from the nearby Latrobe River system, and the vast quantities of water required, have environmentalists concerned.
Environment Victoria senior organiser Hayley Sestokas said the river was already stressed and "in a state of terminal decline".
"They already receive less than half of the flows they need to flush themselves out," Ms Sestokas said.
"That helps prevent deadly algal blooms and increases in salinity, and these things are going to get worse as climate change heats the water as well."
A 2019 Victorian government water study found that the amount of available water in the Latrobe River system was in decline and predicted to fall further due to climate change.
It found long-term available water declined by a quarter between 1997 and 2017, from about 800 gigalitres (GL) a year to about 600GL.
The report predicted that the amount would fall to about 467GL by 2050 and 334GL by 2080.
Power generators have access to water to run their power stations, but those entitlements do not allow it to be used for mine rehabilitation.
To fill the three mines, a total of 2,354GL of water is needed — more than four times the volume of Sydney Harbour at 500GL.
Yallourn will need 630GL, Hazelwood 637GL, and Loy Yang 1,087GL.
To access the water, operators for Yallourn and Loy Yang need to apply to the Victorian water minister for a bulk water entitlement.
Engie, the company behind Hazelwood, has a separate private contract with Gippsland Water.
AGL, which operates the Loy Yang mine, has made an application for an entitlement of up to 35.8GL a year for mine rehabilitation.
On its website, AGL said the amount being requested was "the total of the historical average annual volume of water used for power generation".
The Victorian government is seeking community feedback on the application, which closes on August 15.
Environmentalists want the state government to charge mine operators to access the water for mine rehabilitation, with the money raised invested in projects to improve river health.
"The funds generated must be reinvested locally into programs to help protect and restore the Latrobe River system."
Victorian Recreational Fishing Peak Body (VRFish) representative Rob Caune, who has spent half a century on the region's waterways, said he was concerned about the impact filling mines with water would have downstream.
Mr Caune, who is also a member of the Gippsland Lakes Recreational Fishing Alliance, said he was not convinced the mine operators' attempts to mitigate environmental impacts by staggering the water input over wetter or drier years would work.
"The total amount of water required to rehabilitate all three brown-coal mines is [nearly] 2,500 billion litres of fresh water that is to come out of our already stressed rivers that flow into the Gippsland Lakes," he said.
AGL said it was seeking access to water to fill the Loy Yang mine as part of its plan to rehabilitate the mine in a manner that was "safe and sustainable".
It did not directly answer questions about whether it should pay for the water access.
"Technical studies currently indicate that repurposing the coal mine pit as a lake is the most viable and sustainable rehabilitation option," AGL Loy Yang general manager Christo van Niekerk said.
"A lake could create new habitats for wildlife and increase opportunities for the mine pit to be useful for a range of purposes in the decades ahead."
Mine operators for Hazelwood and Yallourn similarly told the ABC a lake was the safest and most sustainable option for mine pits, with the water to be gradually used over a 10 to 20-year period.
A spokesperson for the Victorian government said: "No decision has been made on AGL's application for a new bulk water entitlement and any water accessed for mine rehabilitation would not diminish the entitlements of existing users, including farmers and the environment."
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