Add Category
Mining company Whitehaven Coal has launched a bid to expand and extend operations at its controversial Maules Creek Mine, near Narrabri in north western NSW.
Key points:
- Whitehaven plans to produce an extra million tonnes of coal per year with an extension to the current site
- The company hopes to extend their mining lease past 2034
- Senator David Pocock protested the mine's construction in 2014
If the plan is approved by the state government, the mine will remain operational for nine years beyond the end of its current lease in 2034 and mine an extra million tonnes of coal per year.
Whitehaven has not proposed to mine land outside its existing tenement.
The move has drawn the ire of ACT Senator and former Wallaby David Pocock, who chained himself to an excavator for more than 10 hours alongside fifth generation farmer Rick Laird when work first started on the mine.
"It just seemed like the most ridiculous mine, in one of our food bowls," Senator Pocock said on Tuesday.
He said Whitehaven was banking on climate inaction.
"This is a company that doesn't seem to have a credible transition plan [to net-zero]," he said.
Whitehaven Coal was fined $150,000 when it pleaded guilty to polluting water near the Maules Creek mine in the Land and Environment Court in 2022.
Maules Creek Ros Druce said she had been opposed to the mine since construction first began in 2014.
At the time, Ms Druce and other opponents, including environmentalists and farmers, said the project and associated forest clearing posed significant environmental threats to biodiversity and water required for agricultural use.
Whitehaven Coal said on Monday the expanded mine would support 800 jobs, with three quarters of the workforce based locally.
It said surveys had already begun to help plan mine design and likely biodiversity offsetting requirements.
Locals still concerned
Ms Druce said she was preparing for a fight against the proposal.
"After they do all their scoping, they will say it's in the interest of the wider community because there will be so much tax paid and because there will be so many people working there and everything else," she said.
"But at what cost? The cost to the environment and the cost to the people that live around here."
Ms Druce said the Maules Creek village, which was a smattering of homes and a single school, had not recovered from the mine's construction.
"Noise, dust, light — so many impacts that will go on for another nine years after their 21-year approval time," she said.