Queensland farming body AgForce has launched legal action against the federal government in a bid to stop liquified carbon dioxide from being pumped into the Great Artesian Basin.
The Carbon Transport and Storage Corporation (CTSCo), a subsidiary of mining giant Glencore, is awaiting state government approval for a pilot scheme to inject Co2 emitted by a coal-fired power station in southern Queensland into underground water aquifers as part of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project trial.
Farming and environmental groups say the project risks causing irreversible damage to the Great Artesian Basin, a vital freshwater source for farmers and one of the country’s “greatest environmental assets”. Glencore maintains the project is based on robust scientific analysis.
The chief executive of AgForce, Michael Guerin, said the lobby group had sought a judicial review of a 2022 decision that found the project did not need to be assessed under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.
“Confidence in our food supply is at genuine risk because of the current proposal from Glencore,” Guerin said. “Court is the last place we want to be but there’s too much at stake not to put our members’ money into this federal court case.”
Guerin said AgForce had been “mystified by the lack of engagement” from federal government ministers and that discussions had “got nowhere”. Taking the matter to court was a last resort, he said.
The federal environment department said projects that fell outside what could be currently assessed under the EPBC Act did not need to undergo federal environmental assessment. The federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, referred questions to the department.
“Legally, neither the minister nor the department can consider matters that fall outside national environment law,” the department said in a statement to Guardian Australia.
According to CTSCo modelling, the pilot project would create a 1.6km-wide “plume area” some 2.3km underground.
The ground water within the plume area would be unsuitable for livestock. But Glencore says there are no farmers currently extracting water at this depth within a 50km radius of the planned injection site.
The Queensland environment department is currently reviewing the project’s environmental impact statement, with a decision expected by May 2024. A state government spokesperson said there were “strict regulatory requirements” in place to assess CCS projects.
The director of the Queensland Conservation Council, Dave Copeman, said he stood “shoulder to shoulder” with AgForce and the National Farmers’ Federation in opposing the project.
He said the conservation group had been lobbying the federal government to include a requirement to assess the impact of CCS projects on underground aquifers in an impending overhaul of the EPBA Act.
“We are calling for that expansion of nature laws to protect the Great Artesian Basin from the impacts of projects such as this,” he said.
Copeman said CCS would likely play some role in decarbonising emission-intensive industries “but this isn’t a hard-to-abate sector”.
“We need to stop mining coal … this is a sector that should not continue,” he said. “It [the pilot scheme] is a fig leaf by Glencore to keep emitting more fossil fuels.”
Glencore said it welcomed the opportunity for a court hearing, where “misleading rhetoric will be shown for what it is and measured against Glencore’s extensive scientific evidence”.
“This litigation is an important test for the commonwealth and state’s respective support for carbon capture and storage in Australia,” it said in a statement.