PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The mining industry has expressed concern over changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, after the Senate on Wednesday passed an amendment to include water resources among the nationally important environmental assets.

The amendment was aimed at protecting water systems impacted by mining and gas projects, and prevented states approving major resources projects without adequate scientific or environmental analysis.

The Western Australia Chamber of Minerals and Energy (CME) warned that the passage of the EPBC Act amendments reinforced the damaging anti-industry approach of the Julia Gillard-led government.

“Just over a year ago, the government agreed to remove duplication and double handling of environment assessments and approvals. Now we’ve seen the federal government backflip and pass the ‘water trigger’ Amendment Bill, which requires EPBC Act assessment and approval of coal seam gas and large coal mining developments which impact on a water resource,” said CME CEO Reg Howard-Smith.

He added that the 'water trigger' represented a significant backwards step in much needed reform to streamline and remove duplication for major project approvals.

The CME expressed its concern that the passage of the legislation would increase costly duplication in the approvals process and weaken Australia’s economic competitiveness, adding that these amendments would not only duplicate existing state and territory processes but, in the process, also add new layers of uncertainty, complexity and cost to resource projects at a time when Australia is already increasingly becoming a less attractive place to develop projects.

“CME remains concerned there appears to be little understanding in Canberra of how difficult business conditions are for many in the resource sector.  The cost of doing business and unnecessary administrative processes, along with volatile commodity prices are significant challenges for the development of many resource projects,” said Howard-Smith.

Meanwhile, the Queensland Resources Council (QRC) described the federal government’s “meddling” with the resource development approvals process as “another unnecessary disincentive to investment”.

“Industry’s focus will now be minimising harm arising from the implementation of the commonwealth EPBC Act's new water trigger, for example, through the drafting of the ‘significant impact’ guidelines,” CEO Michael Roche said.

“Another layer of bureaucracy is simply adding to our global reputation as a prohibitively expensive and complicated place to do business.”

Roche noted that the water trigger was a sop to marginal politics and was not going to make a difference to green activists campaigning to shut down the country’s coal and petroleum industries.

The QRC noted that Queensland was already subject to hundreds of laws and thousands of regulations, able to more than adequately address claimed issues of concern from a federal government perspective.

“Australia has been largely protected from the double-digit unemployment common throughout Europe because of new investment in minerals and energy projects,” he said.

“This bad piece of legislation just serves to throw out another obstacle to valuable projects getting off the drawing board. The only people cheering are those radical activist groups hell-bent on shutting down the coal and coal seam gas industries.”