Issue 114 April 11, 2017
Your independent community newspaper - Ph: 4325 7369
Wallarah 2 Coal Project Inquiry hears submissions
The rally outside the PAC public hearing into the amended DA for the Wallarah 2 coal mine
T
he community stood united in opposition to the Wallarah 2 Coal Project at the NSW Planning and A s s e s s m e n t Commission (PAC) hearing in Wyong on April 5.
The hearing was conducted as part of the PAC’s process to determine whether or not to approve the amended development application for the Wallarah 2 longwall Coal Project. The PAC will accept written submissions on the project until 5:00pm on Wednesday, April 12. Central Coast Council’s Unit
Manager, Development Assessments, Ms Tanya O’Brien, was first to speak, and confirmed Council’s objection to the project. Ms O’Brien said Council had serious concerns about the mine’s impact on the local water supply. She said Council had enlisted two independent consultants, Earth Systems and Pells Sullivan Meynink, to review the amended Development Application, and the consultants found that the risks were greater than those outlined in the Environmental Impact Statement submitted by the developer. “The predictions of the Environmental Impact Statement are
conservative,” she said. Ms O’Brien said the Dooralong and Yarramalong valleys, which lay above the proposed mine, form part of the region’s surface water catchment area, and urged the PAC to consider the future health and safety of the water catchment for current and future residents. “The Environmental Impact Statement underestimates the potential impacts on groundwater,” she said. Ms O’Brien said Council was also worried about the project’s impact on subsidence and the nearby Buttonderry Waste Management Facility on Hue Hue Rd, Jilliby.
She said the weight of the waste when the facility is filled is expected to be approximately 40 million tonnes. She said the Department of Planning and Environment’s draft development consent, which outlined 78 conditions of consent, were “light on at best”. Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council’s CEO, Mr Sean Gordon, told the PAC hearing that the Wallarah 2 Coal Project was “unviable and unsustainable”. Mr Gordon said Darkinjung were the largest private land owners around the mine, and that Wallarah 2 would negatively impact housing developments
that they have planned for the area. He said Darkinjung wanted to use its land assets to develop land for its people and asked the PAC hearing, “do people want to buy next to a coal mine?” Mr Gordon said Aboriginal people had suffered severe land dispossession since 1788, and had not been able to participate in its economic development, despite striving for years to turn their land into an economic opportunity. Mr Gordon described the mine’s proponent’s offering of jobs and procurement as a “beads and trinkets offering”. Former Wyong Councillor and current
Joint Regional Planning Panel member, Mr Ken Greenwald, also spoke against the amended DA. “I am against the proposal to mine in the Wyong valleys because of the risk that I believe it may have on the Central Coast Water supply, with a view that even the smallest risk is too big a risk to take. “After the drought that occurred on the Central Coast from the early 2000s to 2008, when our water supply dropped to only 9 per cent, it had been proven that water and not coal was the number one resource produced in the Wyong Valleys.
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