Anyone who witnessed Friday’s blast near Bulga could see for themselves that the plume carried off into the air.

It was not a case of going up in the air and coming straight back down. Once in the air, the particles float where ever the wind is blowing.

That is why Singleton has an air quality monitor in the town, one of seven in the Upper Hunter.

The state government has spent millions of dollars on this new air quality monitoring network to track dust.

It has further announced last week that more money will be spent trying to determine what chemical matter is in the dust.

For a planning department spokesperson and the mine’s public relations department to provide comment, such as that in page three’s article, and simply say it was retained on the site won’t convince anyone who saw it, let alone a community that is becoming well-versed in such topics.

The only positive residents can draw from the incident is that mine management recognised there was a problem and contacted government departments before blasting.

The problem was identified well before the blasting and one would have thought that the official response would have been a little more convincing than that provided.