BHP Billiton

WGAR News: Forty uranium mines is the plan for Western Australia: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer

Newsletter date: 5 December 2013

Contents:

* Ryan Emery, SBS Radionews: Elder pleads with BHP "don't make me bankrupt"
* Ryan Emery & Greg Dyett, SBS Radionews: Indigenous elder appeals to BHP Billiton
* Babs McHugh, ABC Rural: Aboriginal elder Kevin Buzzacott gets no answer from BHP AGM
* Background to expansion of Olympic Dam mine challenge

* Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: Forty uranium mines is the plan for Western Australia
* WANFA nuclearfree WA, YouTube: WANFA roadshow [an interview with Curtis Taylor]

Sydney's water supply under threat from BHP Longwall coal mine extension

"Allowing BHP to undermine our drinking water supply defies common sense and breaches a personal commitment by Premier O'Farrell to prevent mining in drinking water catchments," Nature Conservation Council of NSW Chief Executive Officer Pepe Clarke declared on Tuesday with the announcement that approval had been given to BHP Billiton's Mount Kembla Dendrobium coal mine to extend under part of Sydney's water catchment.

On Monday 11 February the New South Wales State Government Department of Planning and Infrastructure gave approval to BHP Billiton's Mount Kembla Dendrobium Area 3B long wall mine extension plan. This involves several underground excavations directly under Sydney's Woronora water catchments. The approval was strongly criticised by conservationists including Total Enviropnment Centre director Jeff Angel, and the NSW Conservation Council Pepe Clark who accused the Premier Barrie O'Farrell of breaking a key pre-election promise of not to mine in Sydney's catchments.

Related: Longwall mining, subsidence and damage to Sydney waterways and wetlands | Aboriginal Heritage: Water - Everyone's Future

Protest at BHP Billiton AGM, Melbourne, 17 November 2011

Traditional owners and environmentalists descended on the Melbourne Convention Centre on Thursday 17 November for the BHP Billiton AGM. Using proxies, some twenty Aboriginal elders and supporters gained access to the meeting, while others held a protest outside.

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March on BHP Billiton - 20 October 2011 - on Day 6 of Occupy Melbourne

On Day 6 of Occupy Melbourne, a number of protesters joined an action by Friends of the Earth ACE collective at the Melbourne Office of BHP Billiton, timed to coincide with the company's London AGM.

Having marched up Swanston Street to chants of ‘BHP BP Shell/ You can all/Go to hell’ and ‘System Change not Climate Change’, and escorted by about ten uniformed police - with at least one not-very-undercover plain clothes officer - protesters arrived at the headquarters to find it protected by even more.

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BHP gets approval for world's largest open pit mine at Olympic Dam

BHP Billiton Olympic Dam mine expansion in South Australia has received a go ahead from Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke on 10th October 2011. This will create the world's largest open pit mine, over 1km deep, 4.5km long and 3km wide. The export of uranium is expected to increase from an average of 4,000 tonnes per year to 19,000 tonnes per year, and the production of copper, gold and silver also expected to increase. Olympic Dam already consumes an inordinate amount of ground water extracted from the Great Artesian Basin every day - for free. The mine expansion will entail BHP Billiton expanding groundwater extraction and building a 280 megalitres-a-day desalination plant at Point Lowly, northeast of Whyalla on Spencer's Gulf which will impact the only known breeding ground of the giant Australian cuttlefish, prawn fisheries and the sensitive marine environment.

Save Point Lowly | Save the Great Artesian Basin |
Events: National Day of Action against BHP Billiton - Thursday, October 20 - Melbourne Facebook page or Adelaide Facebook page | BHP Billitons Annual General Meeting at the Melbourne convention centre on November the 17th at 10:30am.

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Promotion: 

Greenpeace targets BHP Billiton over carbon pollution

A Busy week for the activists of Greenpeace Australia who did a banner drop outside BHP Billiton headquarters in Melbourne on Monday and followed it up midweek with erecting a Pollution Tax Collection Point at BHP’s Mount Arthur Mine in the Hunter Valley holding up a BHP coal train temporarily.

Youtube Video: BHP Billiton: The Polluter must Pay