Australia’s Thirst for Coal Creates Homelessness, Bitterness, Pollution

Even as Asian demand for Australia’s resources keeps surging, the fate of a small town

has become a catalyst for pent-up anger over the coal industry’s push into populated and farming areas.

It has also set off a larger debate in Australia, the world’s biggest exporter of coal,

about mining’s costs and benefits to the country.

Even as Asian demand for Australia’s resources keeps surging, the fate of a small town

has become a catalyst for pent-up anger over the coal industry’s push into populated and farming areas.

It has also set off a larger debate in Australia, the world’s biggest exporter of coal,

about mining’s costs and benefits to the country.

The Australian government last month proposed an overhaul of the taxes on resources,

arguing that mining companies benefited disproportionately during the past decade’s commodities boom.

The proposal, which would replace mining royalties paid to the government

with a 40 percent “super profits” tax on corporate income above a still unspecified threshold,

has drawn a fierce response from mining companies.

The companies’ criticism helped sink the approval ratings of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd,

who was forced to resign recently by his own party.

His successor, Julia Gillard, has backed the tax but hinted at a compromise with mining officials,

whose advertising campaign convinced many voters that the tax would kill jobs and hurt the economy.

The tax, mining companies have argued, would make Australia’s resource sectors less competitive

and should not be applied to projects that were started under the royalty system.

Several have threatened to terminate plans for new projects.

“Do projects get killed off as a result of the design?”

asked Michael Roche, chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council,

the umbrella group for mining companies based in the state of Queensland.

“Because if they do, then the super profits tax collects 40 percent of nothing.”

The government has said that revenues from the new tax would create a more balanced economy

by lowering the overall corporate tax rate, helping small businesses, increasing pensions and investing in infrastructure.

Supporters of the tax, including farmers, say mining hurts other industries.

By offering higher wages, it makes labor scarcer and pricier for others;

farmers also fear that new mines will pollute sources of water and destroy agricultural land.

Until a few years ago, most of the coal mining in Queensland took place in the sparsely populated north or center of the state.

But because demand from China, and in the future, India, is expected to keep rising,

companies are exploring for coal reserves or drawing up plans to expand existing mining operations.

Drew Hutton, an environmentalist who helped found the Green Party, said that

after decades of indifference, Australians were now starting to worry about coal’s effects on the environment and their food supply.

For Acland’s Glenn Beutel, the phone call came, as it happened, just before the first anniversary of his mother’s funeral.

A representative of the coal mining company New Hope Coal, which was seeking to expand its operations, asked whether he could drop by.

The next day, he listened to Mr. Beutel’s concerns about increased mining before turning to the visit’s real purpose.

Was Mr. Beutel interested in selling his property?

“I told him it was part of my soul,” Mr. Beutel, 57, said softly. “He ran away.”

But over the next five years, officials of New Hope Coal would meet with Mr. Beutel’s neighbors, buying up their homes and land one by one.

Some sold happily; others said they felt coerced.

Either way, Mr. Beutel now finds himself the last homeowner here, this 120-year-old town vanishing rapidly around him,

huge deposits of coal lying under him and lawyers for the coal company threatening to come down on him.

The fate of Acland and Mr. Beutel, whose situation has received a lot of coverage in the local news media,

has also put a face on opposition to King Coal, Mr. Hutton, 63, said.

“He’s a rather powerful symbol because he’s so self-unassuming and uncomfortable in the spotlight,” he said of Mr. Beutel.

Indeed, Mr. Beutel said he was making no statement against the coal industry;

he himself had worked in gold mining and was opposed to the government’s proposed tax.

His was a “circumstantial stance.”

He said he had become Acland’s last homeowner for the simple reason that he had always had trouble making decisions and was still very attached to this place,

which his mother had helped endow with parks, a war memorial and other beautification projects.

In 2002, New Hope Coal began operations at an open pit mine a couple of miles north of here with promises of prosperity, current and former residents said.

“Acland was going to grow, and we’d have doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs,” said Merilyn Plant,

who lives a few miles north of here, on a farm purchased by her husband’s grandfather.

But by 2005, as it prepared to expand, the company began buying up houses and land.

The school was closed, trees were felled, houses were demolished or moved to a lot outside town.

Looters appeared, carrying off the metal scraps and pipes in abandoned houses.

Last year, when New Hope Coal sought a license from the state to expand once again —

with an open-pit mine right under this town — the last holdouts left.

Since state government officials have strongly backed New Hope Coal’s operations here,

the remaining few believe that it is only a matter of time before the company’s most recent application is approved.

“They will get the mining lease, let’s face it; it’s going to happen,” said Steve Turner, 61, an engineer, who said he had felt intimidated into giving up his property.

A few months ago, Mr. Turner said he finally sold his property to the company for $195,000,

about $26,000 short of what he needed to resettle elsewhere.

His lawyer had advised him that Queensland’s land court, where such disputes are settled in this state, was likely to give him less.

Officials at New Hope Coal declined to be interviewed for this article, which appeared in the New York Times.