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Power at what cost?
Sharyn Munro exposes the true human cost of the coal and CSG rush in Australia

For nearly a year Sharyn Munro travelled through rural Australia, visiting the communities in the coal-mining areas. Here, literally at the coalface, towns and districts are dying — homeowners and farmers forced out by mining, broken in spirit and in health, or else under threat, their lives and properties in limbo as they battle the might of huge mining companies.

Incidences of asthma, cancers and heart attacks show alarming spikes in communities close to coal mines and coal power stations. Once reliable rivers and aquifers are drying up or become polluted. Once fertile agricultural land is becoming unusable. What was once a rich land is becoming a wasteland.

Sharyn Munro exposes the real story of coal in her life-changing book Rich Land, Wasteland: how people are hurting, and rebelling, as coal pushes into hitherto unthinkable areas; how the true costs really stack up against the benefits of our mining boom; and what’s really happening to those individuals and communities who are ultimately paying the price.