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Category: Law, Crime and Justice / Coal / Environment / Mining Environmental Issues

Community group appeals against Hunter Valley mine expansion approval

Monday, 29 Feb 2016 13:52:31

The Bulga Milbrodale Progress Association wants the Mount Thorley Warkworth expansion scrapped. (Audience submitted: Kate Ausburn)

A community in the New South Wales Hunter Valley is seeking to have the approval of a Rio Tinto mine expansion declared invalid due to what it says is a legal error.

The Planning Assessment Commission (PAC) approved an expansion and 21-year extension of the Mount Thorley Warkworth mine in November 2015.

Residents have fought for six years to stop the mine, warning it would decimate the village of Bulga.

The Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) has lodged a summons in the Land and Environment Court on behalf of the Bulga Milbrodale Progress Association requesting the court declare the approval invalid.

EDO chief executive officer Sue Higginson said the mine expansion's approval was based on legal error.

"This is an appeal very unlike the appeals that the community group has run in the past and been wholly successfully in," she said.

"This is an appeal not based on the merit of whether this mine should go ahead or not, but based on whether the Planning Assessment Commission has applied the law properly in NSW as it applies to mining projects in high biodiversity areas."

Ms Higginson said the progress association wanted the approval to be set aside.

"When a community group is seeking judicial review based on a legal error, the thought is to have the approval declared invalid and set aside, and that's precisely what our client's attempting to do in the court," she said.

Expansion approved after thorough process: Rio Tinto

In a statement, Rio Tinto said the current consents "were approved after a thorough and robust process in which all opinions were heard and considered".

"This included two public hearings, a public meeting and numerous calls for public comment, with the most recent resulting in more than 2,800 submissions in support of a strong future for Mount Thorley Warkworth.

The Hunter Valley village of Bulga. Photo: The Environmental Defenders Office has lodged a summons to stop the mine expansion in the Hunter Valley. (Supplied: John Krey)

"The Planning Assessment Commission found that the significant benefits of allowing mining to continue outweigh the potential impacts, and that our applications were consistent with current government policy, particularly in relation to biodiversity, noise, air quality and socio-economic impacts."

The appeal is expected to be heard in the Land and Environment Court later in 2016.

The mine proposal will involve the creation of an open-cut super pit near the village of Bulga, to extract hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal.

Mine workers and the local chamber of commerce welcomed the expansion, saying it would ensure job security and the greater security for the region's small businesses and suppliers of the mine.

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