AMD is the coal industry’s dirty big secret, the toxic waste that no one wants to admit can not be successfully managed.  A toxic stream that gets bigger and dirtier year-on-year until all the heavy metal and excess metal toxicity has been flushed to the surface.  Roman era mines, 2000 years old, are still spewing it.

AMD breaks down clay ‘containment’ ponds so it leaks into the soil creating toxic wastelands. But these ponds hold just long enough after ‘rehab’ for the EPA to tick them as secure.  Who comes back 2 or 5 years later to see the damage progressing and accelerating? Just add another toxic leaching mine to add to NSW’s 570 unremediated mines list.

Coal mining and prime food producing land can not co-exist.  Unless of course you want lead, mercury and aluminium with your Weetbix and in your milk.

[See here for a map of Canada’s problem, a country that has tried to contain the damage, but is now weakening its environmental laws due to miners whining that no one else has to clean up their act so why should they?]

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