From Sydney Morning Herald NSW farmers want new mining moratorium October 26, 2010
The NSW Farmers' Association is calling for a moratorium on any new mining or coal seam gas development across NSW because of environmental concerns.
The association's executive council voted unanimously in support of a moratorium at a meeting in Sydney on Tuesday.
"These industries are being allowed to flourish without proper concern for the threat they pose to farmland and water resources," association mining taskforce chair Fiona Simson said.
NSW farmers are right. People who actually live on the land should be part of all the decisions that involve protection of the environment and local communities. After all, they will have to carry the consequences of the decision made by people in far away city offices. We need more then to be "consulted" when all the decisions had been finalised already behind closed doors. In case of coal seam gas industry it is a case where technology is decades ahead of the environmental legislation - clearly it is time to stop and think what we are doing to our land, water and rural countryside!
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