Australian Pacific Coal's efforts to reopen Dartbrook underground coal mine may be thwarted by a last-minute intervention by the Hunter Thoroughbred Breeders Association designed to block the mine's licence extension.
The Land and Environment Court was set to approve the extension this week, which would have allowed operations to extend from 2022 to 2027.
But in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange on Monday, the Australian Pacific Coal said it had received notice that the breeders association would apply to join the legal proceedings.
The association's involvement could potentially prevent the finalisation of the proceedings on the terms that were previously agreed upon.
Australian Pacific Coal has indicated it will oppose the application.
The company purchased the mine, which has been in care and maintenance since 2006, from Anglo American in 2016.
The Independent Planning Commission previously rejected a proposal to reopen the mine to extract six million tonnes of coal a year until 2027 because of concerns about the project's economic viability.
But the parties came to an agreement during a conciliation conference in September.
The renewed push to reopen the mine came under fire from Lock the Gate, which said it used an air quality assessment taken in 2014 as the base year for background air pollution in the district.
The group argued that the 2014 data did not take into account the impact of the nearby Mount Pleasant mine which began operating in late 2016.
"Average annual coarse (PM10) dust levels in Aberdeen in the last two years were several points higher than they were in 2014, and last year they exceeded the national standard," Lock the Gate Alliance NSW spokesperson Georgina Woods said.
"The Hunter is already suffering from coal dust levels that exceed the national standard and the health of the population is being negatively impacted as a result."
Lock the Gate also criticised the company for failing to address how the carbon emissions produced from the extension - 113.8 million tonnes, including downstream emissions, over the life of the project - would impact the climate, both locally and globally.
The Hunter Valley's 14 air pollution monitoring stations recorded multiple exceedances of the national standard for coarse and fine particle pollution in 2019.
The worsening air quality was the subject of a community meeting in Singleton late last year.
Doctors said they had observed a strong relationship between air pollution and respiratory illness in Singleton and Muswellbrook.
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