A controversial underground coalmine that will threaten the water supply of 71 landowners in NSW’s southern highlands will net the state government just $120m over two decades, locals have been told.
A multinational steelmaker, Korea-based Posco, is seeking approval for an underground coalmine near Berrima in the southern highlands of New South Wales, part of Sydney’s drinking-water catchment.
The Hume Coal project would extract 3.5m tonnes of coal each year for 19 years, using an unusual mining method known as “pine feather” to extract 35% of the total deposit.
On Wednesday night locals gathered from across the southern highlands region, in the small town of Exeter, about two hours’ south of Sydney, for a meeting with state planning officials to discuss the company’s recently released environmental impact statement.
The community is almost wholly opposed to the mine, according to surveys of locals who fear contamination of the region’s pristine aquifers, noise from increased train and truck movements, particle pollution from the coal stockpiles, and the impact on towns such as historic Berrima, one of Australia’s best-preserved examples of a Georgian village.
The chief concern, however, is the loss of bore water for the region’s farmers and landholders.
The coal is to be extracted from shallow deposits, which will cause groundwater to fill the voids and cause the drawdown of a significant number of bores. Locals were told on Wednesday it could take as long as 73 years for the full recovery of the groundwater.
The company’s environmental impact statement, released last month, revealed the mine would cause 93 groundwater bores in the region to drop by anywhere between two and 80 metres.
Seventy-one landholders will be affected.
It was also revealed on Wednesday night that the project would give the state government just $120m royalties over the 19-year life of the mine. That’s an average of about $6.3m a year in today’s dollars.
The company has offered to bring in new pumps or drill deeper bores for landholders.
But representatives from the NSW Department of Planning and Environment told locals they were concerned about the distinct lack of detail on the company’s proposed mitigation measures.
The executive director of resource assessments, David Kitto, told the crowd the mine would simply not be approved unless the company provided more detail on how it would address drops in the bore water.
“The predicted number of bores affected is 90-odd, which is very, very significant. That is a significant number compared to other mining projects in NSW,” Kitto said.
“They do say they’ll make good those impacts in the environmental impact statement, but there’s not a lot of detail on how that would happen.”
“I don’t think the government will be approving significant impacts on a lot of bores like that unless there’s a lot more detail from the company on how it would be managed.”
One local, Berrima berry farmer Bruce Robertson, is a retired supervising geologist with four decades of experiencing in coalmining. He told the meeting the company’s claims did not stack up.
“These aquifers are in the triassic sandstones and that’s why they’re so magnificent, and they don’t exist under the coal measures,” Robertson said.
“If they’re proposing to drill beneath the coal measures to actually source water, then that’s a fictitious statement,” he said.
“I can assure you, having developed mines and bore fills associated with mines, that what they’re saying is impossible to be replaced,” he said.
But Hume Coal maintains that the impact on water levels has been the “key consideration throughout the whole mine design”.
Company spokesman Ben Fitzsimmons said locals had every right to be concerned, but attributed fears about the project to a lack of understanding.
“Of course people are continuing to have this fear, because it’s simply a lack of understanding,” Fitzsimmons told Guardian Australia.
“Any impact on groundwater, the onus is on us, Hume Coal, to ensure that anyone who has access to groundwater now retains access today, tomorrow, during operations and after operations,” he said.
The company would ensure continuous access to bore water for landholders who accepted their help, he said, by drilling deeper bores and using more powerful pumps.
He said the mine site would integrate into the landscape and its visibility would be minimal and “relatively out-of-sight”.
The mine would use on-demand and infrared lighting at night to lessen any glow from the site.
Fitzsimmons also pointed to the creation of 400 construction jobs, and 300 ongoing jobs during the mine’s operation.
Another local, Ian Burns, said the mine’s low recovery rate and expensive method raised questions about its economic viability. He said it would only take a slight drop in the price of coal for the project to become unviable.
Burns, who is part of the Battle for Berrima group, fears locals may be left with a mess if the mine is approved, but then abandoned by the company due to the cost.
“It’s fraught with danger. From a financial perspective, the coal of price doesn’t have to change much and the whole thing is just uneconomic,” he said.
He said surveys showed 94% of residents in Exeter and 93.5% in Berrima were opposed to the mine.
Submissions are being taken on the EIS until June.
