Australia: Two Lock to Coal Conveyer Belt in Continuing Protests

Novem­ber 4th, 2014

UPDATE 8:30AM (Aus­tralian East­ern Time): Police and Police Res­cue have arrived on the scene.

10:50: Jamie and Seren­i­ty have been arrest­ed in the line of pro­tect­ing our cli­mate and water, and have been tak­en to Narrabri Police sta­tion.

MAULES CREEK, 4 Novem­ber 2014: In the sec­ond day of Leard For­est Alliance’s (LFA) “Release the Bats” Ini­tia­tive against White­haven Coal two peo­ple have locked them­selves to a con­vey­er belt in the White­haven-owned Narrabri North under­ground mine.

Seren­i­ty Hill, 37, and Jamie Yarnald, 32 immo­bilised the belt as part of a week­end of protest against the con­tro­ver­sial White­haven-owned Maules Creek coal mine project. If this mine is allowed to con­tin­ue its oper­a­tions, White­haven will deplete the ground­wa­ter aquifer by up to two metres.

“Work­ing with farms and food has shown me first hand just how impor­tant clean usable water is for our sur­vival. So the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion or lack of our pre­cious water is very con­cern­ing for me,”  said Ms. Hill, a food sys­tems ana­lyst whose action with Mr. Yarnald halt­ed mine oper­a­tions for the course of the morn­ing.

LFA spokesper­son Phil Evans said “The IPCC report released yes­ter­day warns that if we con­tin­ue with the dis­re­gard for our envi­ron­ment we have shown, by 2050 we will see cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change.” Evans called upon the NSW gov­ern­ment to “say neigh to coal this Mel­bourne Cup day.”

The LFA is call­ing on the NSW gov­ern­ment to stop work imme­di­ate­ly on the scan­dal-plagued Maules Creek project and to con­duct a full inquiry into the plan­ning and approval meth­ods that allowed this project to pro­ceed.

“Coal needs to stay in the ground for us all to have a live­able, breath­able cli­mate. 80% of coal needs to stay in the ground for us to avoid cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change,” said Mr. Yarnald. His arrest with Ms. Hill adds to the over 270 arrests this year in a con­tin­u­ous effort from the com­mu­ni­ty led, non-vio­lent Leard Block­ade cam­paign.

Fur­ther Infor­ma­tion:

Emi­ly Rose Leard For­est Alliance Spokesper­son 0401 214 729

Phil Evans Leard For­est Alliance Spokesper­son 0490 064 139

 

High Res­o­lu­tion Pho­tos: mediafire.com/folder/6kj6m626b81xy/4_November_2014

Twit­ter updates @FLACCoal and #Leard­Block­ade

from Front Line Action on Coal