The Singleton Argus was told by residents that the cloud drifted across the Bulga village and across to Wambo after the blast at Bulga at 12.40pm.

The concerns were reported to the mine on the day and a return phone call was received yesterday telling the concerned resident that the cloud was caused by wet weather. The explosives were reportedly in the ground for a week and became wet.

The resident was told by the mine that the toxic clouds could happen again if the wet weather continued.

On December 9 last year, the crowd gathered at the air quality monitoring station were told by minister for Environment Climate Change and Water NSW Frank Sartor that mines must improve their blasting.

“We can no longer have these plumes of red dust,”’ he said at the time.

Resident Graeme Gibson said residents want to know what the government is going to do about the blasts.

“This simply is not good enough,” he said.

“The coal mining companies clearly can not be trusted to self regulate their blasting,” he said.

“There should be inspectors on the ground every time a coal mine wants to explode some coal.

“This pollution of the Hunter Valley – this sacrifice of the Hunter Valley to the fossil fuel industry has got to stop.”

The Department of Planning confirmed the compliance office in Singleton has received a complaint from a resident about a blast in the Bulga area.

“This complaint is being investigated, to ascertain whether any conditions of consent have been breached,” a department spokesperson said.

The air quality monitor located at Civic Avenue in Singleton showed a ‘very good’ reading on Tuesday for PM10 (9.2) and PM2.5 (3.4).

Singleton is located approximately 22km from Bulga.

qMeanwhile the air quality figures were not available for Singleton yesterday after high humidity caused some problems. A spokesperson for the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water confirmed the site was down after problems recordings from high humidity from 6pm Wednesday to 1am Thursday.

The spokesperson said the information was collected and should be available on the site today.