New mine rehabilitation data released by the NSW Minerals Council yesterday has shown that 80 percent of land disturbed by mining in the last two years has been rehabilitated.
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The data from 2012 and 2013 was released at the NSW Minerals Council Environment and Community Conference, held in the Hunter.
It comes as part of the Upper Hunter Mining Dialogue process, established in 2010, that includes representatives from eight coal producers in the region as well as community, environment and business groups.
NSW Minerals Council CEO Stephen Galilee said the new reporting process had been introduced to bring about greater transparency among producers for the community.
“We’ve been determined from the start of the dialogue process, from a Minerals Council perspective, to ensure that the companies involved delivered outcomes and meaningful improvements and changes in practice,” he said.
“In a similiar way that the Upper Hunter Air Quality Monitoring Network has provided real-time data to the community so they are better informed about the state of air quality in the region, this reporting tool will provide information as to actually what is happening on the ground.”
“It means our progress can be monitored from the community perspective and also the industry perspective.”
According to the report at the end of 2013 there was 18,283, up from 18,098 in 2012, hectares of disturbed and unrehabilitated land across the Singleton, Muswellbrook and Upper Hunter Shire local government areas.
Across the same areas there was 9,145 hectares of mine rehabilitation in 2013, up from 8,791 in 2012.
As part of the dialogue process coal producers will provide combined data on Upper Hunter rehabilitation as well as an annual report which will incorporate six rehabilitation principles.
Mr Galilee said the 2012-13 rehabilitation figure of 0.8 per hectare would fluctuate depending on the life cycle of current and future mining projects.
“It will move higher or lower depending on the various stages of mining at the various operations,” he said.
“As mining operations change and they move, then over the course of that mine’s plan of development more land can potentially be disturbed.
“In some years I suspect that ratio will be higher than one, other years it potentially will be lower than what it is now (0.8) - it just depends on where the different mines are in stages of operation.
“The idea is to aim for progressive rehabilitation so that over time we are rehabilitating as much land as we disturb, and ultimately as mines come to the end of their life the maximum amount of land that can be rehabilitated is rehabilitated.
One of the main issues surrounding mine rehabilitation remains the voids left at the end of a mine’s life cycle and had been discussed, Mr Galilee said.
Yesterday the conference heard from Professor Friedrich von Bismarck, an international expert in mine closure who has overseen mine rehabilitation in Eastern Germany since 1995 in his role as head of the Berlin-based Joint Governmental Agency for Coal Mine Rehabilitation.
Pr von Bismarck highlighted to the conference assembled at Crowne Plaza Hunter Valley various project developments undertaken across current and former mining centres in Germany.
“I think the process of mine closure in East Germany has functioned as a catalyst for development,” he told the conference.
“The mining landscape had given us a lot of opportunities in agriculture, and tourism, real estate and the regional population is building up and are identifying and loving the new landscape.”
The mining town of Bitterfeld, near the East German city of Leipzig, had been regarded as the “ugliest and dirtiest city in Germany” but had since become a spot on the tourism map, Pr von Bismarck said.
