MOTHBALLED Dartbrook coal mine has been given the green light to resume operations, but only until 2022, after the Independent Planning Commission rejected a five-year extension backers said was necessary to make the mine financially viable.
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The commission cited an "unsatisfactory" assessment of the extended mine's greenhouse gas impacts in refusing Australian Pacific Coal's application to operate the underground mine until 2027, in a decision announced today only minutes after the company announced a trading halt on the Australian Stock Exchange.
It followed significant public opposition to the proposal on issues including mine safety.
The commission approved bord and pillar mining until December, 2022, consistent with the original mine approval in 1991, after Australian Pacific Coal and the Department of Planning acknowledged it was a "less intensive and environmentally-impacting activity than longwall mining".
But the commission refused a five-year extension because of impacts on air quality, noise, subsidence, groundwater and greenhouse gas emissions which "have not been fully considered in this application".
The commission found there was a "lack of rigour" in the assessment of the environmental and social costs of the project in the cost benefit analysis and "as a result the commission is not satisfied that these have been adequately assessed and quantified".
The commission found the company did not adequately consider the air quality impact of the mine "in the context of changes in background air quality since the original approval was granted".
"The information provided up to this point regarding greenhouse emissions-related impacts and the appropriateness of the methodology for estimating the social and economic costs of the projected emissions is unsatisfactory," the commission said.
Subsidence impacts of longwall mining on significant agricultural and equine industry land as part of the five-year extension "have not been considered, should longwall mining recommence", the commission said.
The commission panel criticised the lack of an assessment of the economic and social impacts of the proposed five-year extension on the Hunter equine industry.
The commission also found the extension proposal "would not be in accordance with the principles of ecologically sustainable development or inter-generational equity, and as such is not in the public interest".
"There is uncertainty about the application's future impacts as it entertains the possibility that some aspects of the currently approved project may continue or restart after 2022," the commission noted.
It also noted Australian Pacific Coal's previous statement that the proposed five-year extension of the approval period was required to justify the capital expenditure involved in recommissioning the mine.
On August 5 the company advised the stock exchange it had appointed a new chief financial officer and company secretary who would operate on a part time basis. It intended to relocate its office to the Dartbrook mine site outside Muswellbrook, the company said.
The Dartbrook mine was famously brought out of mothballs by Nathan Tinkler at Christmas, 2015.
