In the past when a meeting was held, involving an open cut mine expansion approval, there would have been standing room only in the venue but at yesterday's public meeting on Hunter Valley Operations South Modification 5 the Civic Centre was lets say nearly empty.
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Only two speakers registered to voice their opposition to Yancoal’s plans to increase production at HVO South from 16 million tonnes per annum to 20Mtpa, thereby increasing the height of the highwall and leave a 523 hectare final void that will be a ground water sink.
Singleton will host two Planning and Assessment Commission (PAC) meeting this week and no doubt the three commissioners attending Thursday’s United Wambo hearing will be hoping for more interest than what took place on Tuesday afternoon.
In fact there would have been more people from PAC in the Civic Centre than those involved in the mine or local residents.
Questions must be asked as to the cost involved in holding this meeting and what was going to be achieved.
One of the two speakers Camberwell resident Deidre Olofsson a regular at these events was also shocked at the lack of interest in the meeting.
“I guess people are sick and tired of doing so much work on their presentations and nothing ever changes – PAC just approve the mine plans no matter what we say,” she said.
Mrs Olosson told PAC she was most concerned about the final void saying how can you place a value on land post-mining when you do not know what to do with the final void.
“How do you monitor the void in the future because no one can tell me how it will affect the environment, how it will affect ground water supplies,” she said.
“We might be in drought now but this void at HVO is located only 200 metres from the Hunter River – what happens in a flood. If the void overflows and pollutes the river how can be manage that and who pays for the rehabilitation.”
Mrs Olofsson said with 30 voids in the Hunter and the creation of a new landscape thanks to mining the impacts on local climate will be significant.
She said in closing that if the mining company’s can’t afford to fill-in the voids then they can’t afford to mine in the first place.
Hunter Communities Network is disgusted by the total disregard given to the community by the PAC and NSW Government when considering large mines.
“Two public meetings for two very large neighbouring mine expansions near Jerry’s Plains are being held in Singleton this week. This lack of consideration for community capacity to attend public meetings with very short notice exposes the farce that PAC meetings truly are,” said Hunter Communities Network convenor, Bev Smiles.
“These very large mine expansions will cause more dust and mine noise, take more ground water, introduce three larger final voids into the Hunter landscape and destroy more bushland now listed as critically endangered.”
“These cumulative impacts are the final straw for the remaining community between Singleton and Jerry’s Plains. More than 31 private properties will be impacted.”