IAN Hedley has reached a tipping point.
The multi-award winning Singleton businessman came to the precipice on Friday when he addressed a state government planning assessment commission and objected to a $600million Mount Thorley Warkworth open-cut coalmine expansion plan.
It was a momentous step for someone whose company has surfed the coal boom for a couple of decades and now employs 90 staff and 25 contractors.
Mr Hedley is believed to be the first major Hunter entrepreneur to take a strong public stance against expansion of the region’s dominant industry.
His wife, Jan, and their 20-year-old daughter Kristy also opposed the expansion and addressed the commission.
And, in a way, the views of the Hedleys reflect a growing community consciousness.
An opinion of “enough is enough” was vividly expressed by the vast majority of 70 speakers who addressed the commission last week.
Mr Hedley’s apparent philosophical contradiction, and the fact Friday was his 59th birthday, were not lost on him.
He is now at an age in sight of retirement, yet instead of receding from view, the coal industry is looming larger than ever on his horizon.
Mr Hedley’s Hedweld Engineering headquarters, in the Mount Thorley industrial estate, is less than 500 metres from the edge of the Mount Thorley Warkworth pit.
Mr Hedley told the commission that the open-cut’s blasting had severely cracked Hedweld buildings and more than $2million worth of computerised metal working machines could not tolerate high dust volumes that blew from the mine.
At times a potentially toxic orange blasting plume also clouded his factory and caused health concerns for workers, Mr Hedley said.
And to top things off, the Hedleys bought Bulga’s 1925 general store and post office buildings and spent about $500,000 restoring them as a family home only to learn that the Warkworth expansion was now proposed to come 2.6 kilometres from the front door.
Mr Hedley and Kristy told the commission that the family moved from their previous home because of encroaching mines and chose Bulga on the assurance of a 2003 state government and Coal and Allied agreement that Saddle Ridge would never be mined and open-cuts would never reach the Bulga community.
“You have to know something of my background to understand, I’m very attached to this place,” he told The Argus.
“Where I come from people give their word and then honour it.
“And my great, great grandfather was George Loder, one of the first explorers who came to this area with John Howe and Benjamin Singleton.”
Mr Hedley said he began to feel uneasy about the coal industry in February when he complained to Mount Thorley Warkworth management about vibration damage, dust, orange blasting plumes and the use of a lane behind his workshop.
“A representative of the company came over and told me I was a supplier and I should make a commercial decision about the issues,” Mr Hedley said.
“This indicated I should back off and zip my lip if I wanted to stay a supplier, so it raised a real ethical question for me.
“Cam (Halfpenny, the Mount Thorley Warkworth operations general manager) has since apologised for the bloke but it shouldn’t have happened in the first place, it demonstrates arrogance I can’t accept.”
Mr Halfpenny told The Argus yesterday the company took any concerns raised by our neighbours very seriously.
“We have been working with Mr Hedley for some time now and we will continue to do so,” he said.
“We have a range of measures in place aimed at managing impacts such as dust and vibrations, and we will continue to work with our neighbours on ways we can improve,” Mr Halfpenny said.
Mr Hedley said the Hunter was now being “overmined for short-term gain”.
He finished his submission asking the three commissioners to look at the broader picture, genuinely weigh up community concerns and consider the situation as if it were their homes, their health and their community facing devastation.
Commission chairman, Neil Shepherd, responded by saying for the third time during the two-day sitting that the commission was independent.
None of the commissioners needed to work, they had all been appointed to jobs by both sides of politics and they were not subject to direction by any government minister, Dr Shepherd said.
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