As simple as it sounds, that is how open cut mining was explained to the community earlier this decade.

In the past few years the open cut mining industry has become so huge in the Upper Hunter that even those in the industry are surprised and often impressed by the sheer magnitude of physical appearance of open cut mining.

There is no ‘mine a little bit’ any more.

The attitude now is mine huge bits and let’s fix it all up later.

But the question now raised is how much will get fixed and at what cost to taxpayers and what cost to the environment.

At the risk of yet again damning an industry that gives this community so much, the need to raise the issue of rehabilitation is timely.

With a sixty-day moratorium announced Monday (now down to 55 days by the way) the whole issue of rehabilitation must be looked at.

There are too many unknowns in all of this and thorough research must precede any more giant pits.

Tony Laffan spoke of a void that was 4.6km long and 290m deep. These are not the sized voids that the industry anticipated ten years ago and there are plenty more equally large and much larger pits already in existence. You only have to take a short drive out of Singleton to see it for yourself.

If we are going to leave this sort of a footprint, surely we must offer acceptable, sound and well researched plans on how the Hunter Valley will be repaired.

And to be honest, if the rehabilitation had been carried out as first indicated, the issues the community is having with dust and air quality wouldn’t have even come up.

Our local mines employ the best environmental minds in the world and they have great ideas and techniques ready to put into practice.

These ideas should be considered on a cost/benefit platform, not just put down as an expense which is often too hard to sell to either company directors or shareholders.