Wallarah 2 confident mine will be approved

“This has been the most extensively studied project and there is no doubt that we can satisfy the standards of environmental standards expected by the NSW government,” said Mr Smith. “The company begins today to finalise all our investigations and studies to ensure that we will satisfy the Director General Requirements (DGRs), which are what must be satisfied in our Environmental Assessment (EA) report."

“We look forward to the robust approvals process as announced by the Minister,” he said, adding that he expected the finalisation of the EA would take a few months. Mr Smith said the company had set internal standards for the many investigations and studies that it believed were beyond what the community and the Government might ask and this was part of the reason it could go forward with confidence.

“We made the decisions that we would not even propose to mine beneath any of the region’s water supply infrastructure and that our surface facilities would be designed and managed in ways that ensured they sit well within industrial areas and that any impacts such as dust and noise are contained pretty much on site,” he said.

Mr Smith said the proposed mine plan took into account all surface structures including homes, facilities including roads and bridges, land use and most importantly, water regimes to minimise the effects of subsidence. “This mine proposal is the most exhaustively examined in NSW and has been subject to an extraordinary examination through the 2007 Strategic Inquiry in to mining in the Wyong Local Government Area,” said Mr Smith. The economic impact assessment has already shown that in its first three years of construction alone the mine would generate more than $1 billion into the local economy and generate more than 1800 jobs.

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