A Department of Planning assessment has found the controversial Wallarah 2 Coal Project at Jilliby could be approved, despite concerns about impacts on the region’s water supply.
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But the finding comes with 78 strict approval conditions attached.
These compel the mine’s proponents, Wyong Coal and the Korean government-backed Kores, to undertake a range of measures relating to intensive monitoring of water resources, and independent audits of subsidence, surface water and groundwater.
The conditions include compensatory water supply provisions to private land owners, as well as a Central Coast Water Supply Compensatory Arrangement which requires the mining company to “compensate for the measured losses of water to the Central Coast Water Supply caused by underground coal mining on the site until the cessation of mining operations”.
Australian Coal Alliance spokesman Alan Hayes said the approval conditions are so onerous as to render the project too expensive and unviable.
Member for Wyong and Labor’s shadow minister for the Central Coast, David Harris, concurred, telling ABC Central Coast Radio:
“This might be a case of the NSW government not wanting to say no to upset the mining industry, but at the same time making this proposed operation unviable.”
The independent Planning Assessment Commission will now review the department’s assessment report.
Dr Oliver Holm, the department’s executive director of resource assessments and compliance, said the department had strengthened the conditions for approval in the current assessment, but continued “to support the project’s potential to create 300 operational jobs, 450 construction jobs, to stimulate the regional Central Coast economy, and to provide $5 million worth of contributions to Central Coast Council for projects benefitting the local community and environment”.
