I cannot honestly believe that Dr Nikki Williams (Viewpoint NDL August 11) could possibly compare the agricultural resources, or for that matter the productivity of the Liverpool Plains to a small purpose built experimental vineyard in a coal mining area of the Hunter Valley.

Has anyone ever taken the time to see the difference between the soils required to grow grapes and those of the prime cereal crops of New South Wales?

It is like comparing peas to the Pope; they have absolutely no relationship whatsoever!

The mining industry is a significant employer in regional New South Wales, so too is the rural

sector.

You do not have to drive very far down the Hunter Valley in NSW to see the damage that mining does to the environment. Large scale mining in the Hunter Valley has really got under way in earnest in the last fifty years. Agriculture has been on the Liverpool Plains for the last 170 years. Do we see the total despoliation those fertile Hunter river flats as the way forward for the future?

In the Caroona coal project all the landholders are asking for is an independent catchment-wide study of the water structure of the region. In the past mining companies go into an area and the way that they remedy damage to the environment is with the cheque book to pay out the farmer and move him off his land? Do we think that this is co-existing?

I am not sure where these people think that we are going to safely grow the food to feed us into the next century!

Timothy Duddy

QUIRINDI