NSW coal miners suffer a double blow

The rejection by the Planning Assessment Commission of two open-cut mine expansions in the Hunter Valley and the Blue Mountains has been described as a “brutal double blow” by the NSW Minerals Council.

In two separate decisions, the commission dismissed plans to expand the Drayton South mine, southeast of Muswellbrook and the ‘Coalpac Consolidation Project’, near the Gardens of Stone National Park northwest of Lithgow.

The Drayton South project was said to be not in the public interest, because it came too close to the Coolmore and Darley thoroughbred stud farms - deemed to be critical to the nation’s equine industry.

“The Commission considers the economic benefits of the proposed mine must be weighed against not only the potential economic loss of the equine industry ... but also the negative impact on the international reputation of NSW and Australia,” the three commission members said, while also noting potential damage to the region’s wine and tourism industries.

Almost all coal approved under the mine’s existing Drayton operations has already been extracted, and CFMEU Mining and Energy Northern District President Peter Jordan said the decision jeopardised the livelihood of 500 Drayton mineworkers. Drayton South’s operator, Anglo American Coal, said the verdict would cost the state $35 million in royalties a year. They have not ruled out an appeal.

Following the rejection of the Coalpac mine, near Lithgow, Coalpac CEO Ian Follington announced that the company would go into administration. “It means we have to go into liquidation as we’ve got no ­reason to continue to trade,” he said.

The extra coal was to have supplied EnergyAustralia’s Mount Piper Power Station or the largely mothballed Wallerawang plant nearby. EnergyAustralia said the decision made the future of the Mt Piper power plant uncertain.

“In light of this decision, we will look at alternative options for coal supply at the same time as assessing our longer-term commercial position in the current energy market,” Luke Welfare, EnergyAustralia’s general manager for NSW, said.

The commission said the mine would have intruded on a region of pagoda rock structures with high conservation value both as unique landforms and also as habitats for threatened species. About 300 ha of stone formations and forest were at risk.

“Mining in the vicinity of these landforms has been found to be unacceptable in the past and the commission has been unable to find any compelling new evidence to support a different outcome in this instance,” it said.

Environmental groups applauded the decisions and called on the Baird government to declare the Ben Bullen State Forest, site of the Coalpac mine, a conservation area.