A GRAZIER has lost the latest battle with a Queensland coal mega-mine.
Bruce Currie owned Speculation cattle farm north of Jericho.
Mr Currie and his wife Annette said the GVK Kevin's Corner mine's groundwater demands would effectively destroy their livelihood.
The property, west of Emerald, was in the region where mining giants GVK Hancock and Adani wanted to begin major mining operations.
Currie went to the Land Court to stop the proposed $4.2 billion Kevin's Corner coal project in the Galilee Basin.
But in a new judgment delivered at the Land Court in Brisbane on Tuesday, Member Wayne Cochrane decided the recommendation for the Hancock mining lease ought to be granted.
"Inevitably ... mining projects of this magnitude will have negative impacts and undesired consequences on the environment, particularly in the immediate vicinity of the mine," Mr Cochrane said in the new judgment.
"However I have come to the view that those consequences are outweighed by the benefits that will flow from the development of the mine."
GVK Hancock wanted to extract about 30 million tonnes of coal a year at the combined underground and open cut thermal coal mine.