AIRBORNE dust particles reached hazardous levels in Singleton’s windy conditions on Tuesday despite most mines in the area implementing changes to operations to reduce their impacts.
The six Upper Hunter air quality monitoring network stations in the Singleton area all exceeded the hazardous levels for PM10 of over 100ug/m³.
Peaks were recorded at Maison Dieu, Singleton north west and Camberwell at 4pm and 10am on Tuesday
Maison Dieu recorded a PM10 reading of 249.4ug/m³ in winds of 54.1km per hour, Singleton north west read 450.0ug/m³ in winds up to 44.2km per hour and Camberwell read 346.5ug/m³ in winds of 42.3km per hour. These are hourly readings.
The 24 hour rolling averages for both monitors remained in the very poor range of the high 70ug/m³ for most of Tuesday afternoon and into the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Despite the hazardous readings at 10am the rolling 24-hour average reading was in the poor range.
The Singleton north west and Mt Thorley monitors experienced power outages due to the wind.
Singleton north west was out for approximately three hours after it recorded a peak of 450.0ug/m³ at 10am. There are gaps in the recorded data because of this.
Singleton compliance officers were active during the day conducting nine inspections of mines in the Upper Hunter.
This included six on-site mine inspections and three observation inspections from boundary vantage points.
During the inspections a large amount of dust was observed on the New England Highway at Ravensworth.
A Department of Planning spokesperson said the dust was observed to be coming from the Macquarie Generation power station ash dam.
“The department contacted the company and also the Office of Environment and Heritage, which has responsibility for the company’s environmental protection licence,” the spokesperson said.
An OEH spokesperson said OEH was investingating this matter and required Macquare Generation to explain activities on the site that day.
One of the mine inspections conducted by compliance officers was in response to two complaints about dust.
“This mine was requested to modify its operations and an inspection found the mine’s actions were satisfactory,” the spokesperson said.
The department found other mines had already shut down equipment, ceased operations in exposed pits or modified other operations to minimise dust. No draglines were found to be operating, while a number of truck and shovel fleets had been shut down and haulage trucks slowed down to minimise dust.
Those who are subscribers to the OEH air monitoring network alert system need to re-register for the new monitors that have since come online to be alerted of exceedences at those locations.
To register for either SMS or email alerts go to http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au /aqms/subscribe.htm or call 131 555.
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