Oz court dismisses appeals against Adani coal mine project
25 Aug 2017 10:40 PM IST
Melbourne: Indian mining giant Adani Group's 16.5 billion dollar controversy-hit coal mine project in Australia cleared two more legal hurdles on Friday with a Brisbane court dismissing appeals filed by environmentalists and a traditional landowner against the venture.
A full bench of the Federal Court in Brisbane dismissed challenges from Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and native title objections from a central Queensland man named Adrian Burragubba.
The Court dismissed an appeal by ACF against an earlier federal court ruling that upheld the Federal Environment Minister granting an approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act and Burragubba's appeal for a judicial review of Native Title Tribunal's decision to allow the mine to proceed.
Adani, in a statement, said that Friday's court rulings have reinforced its legal right to develop its Carmichael thermal coal resource.
"The decisions today are the second and third judicial decisions this week dismissing claims brought by a combination of the dissenting minority of the Wangan and Jagalingou (W&J) People and activist groups," the company said.
"These appeals simply tried to delay a project that will create 10,000 direct and indirect jobs," Adani Australia CEO and Head of Country Jeyakumar Janakaraj said.
The project will also inject 22 billion dollars in royalties and charges into the state coffers to be reinvested back into the broader community, Janakraj said. Burragubba was also involved in an action dismissed earlier this week by the Queensland Court of Appeal relating to the granting of a mining lease covering the Carmichael resource.
"Burragubba suggests he is acting on behalf of the W&J community, but the W &J people voted by 294 1 to support an Indigenous Land Use Agreement with Adani," the company said.
The Federal Court on Friday ruled it was "not possible to draw robust conclusions" about the extent to which coal from Carmichael would increase global temperatures, according to media reports.
"It is therefore difficult to identify a relationship between (Carmichael) and any impacts on relevant matters of national environmental significance which may occur as the result of any increase in global temperature," the court said.
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