Lake Macquarie residents claim Centennial Coal is disguising an open cut mine as an underground one, in order to gain state government approval.
80,000 people live within 10 kilometres of the proposed site at Fassifern, and opponents say all will be affected by dust and noise.
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Thankyou NBN for highlighting this outrageous proposal put forward by Centennial Coal. As a Coal Miners daughter, i am well aware of the miners culture regarding”Mates Underground”
My understanding is that with OLSTAN not one employee will be underground!
there will be no miners lamps, unless possibly when working overnight!
Because it is under the sun & in my view OPEN CUT. It is a ridiculous proposal in an area highly populated. I have never attended a first Committee meeting where approx 60 ppl wish to be on it. Let alone a Community says No meeting held the week before, with standing room only! The Community says No. THe SEPP says NO. The Government should listen and say NO!
This cannot be considered an underground mine. Half of the coal would come from an open cut trench 40m wide at the bottom and 100m wide at the top. None of the machinery or operators would be underground, yet Centennial has said this would be an underground operation because the augers (large drills) would be underground as they bore into the exposed coal seam.
The excavation, the huge piles of overburden and handling of coal would all cause fine dust. There are 78,000 people living within 10km, all to be affected by windblown dust with potential health impacts.
No one has ever proposed a mine like this before, in the middle of such a large population. The NSW Government promised a permanent ban on open cut mining methods in Lake Macquarie.
After Centennial Coal’s attempt in 2006 to start a 15 km open cut mine between Cooranbong and Awaba we all knew they would be back with another plan sooner rather than later. This new proposal is open cut by another name; the trench has to be dug to allow access for the augers. The environmental damage is the same; airborne particles that make us ill and round-the-clock heavy machinery permanently wrecking the landscape for very little gain. What gain there is will certainly not benefit the local area.
Coal mining in the Lake Macquarie area should be banned. This is part of an important green corridor between the ocean and the Great Dividing Range; there is no reason why the population, fauna and flora should suffer permanent damage for the sake of short term gain by a mining company. I grew up in a coal mining area in England and I still suffer the results of breathing the filthy air.
Double the Dust, Double the Danger
Centennial Coals’ latest proposal, “Olstan” is almost directly adjacent to the suburbs of Blackalls Park, Fassifern, Toronto & Awaba, but its cumulative effect will extend much further afield. Already Lake Macquarie residents have extremely high rates of asthma. Perhaps due to sharing air space with one of the worlds largest Coal fired Power Stations, Eraring Energy? Which from all reports.will be the recipient of much of this “Olstan” coal.
Is it reasonable to expect such densely populated residential areas with nearby children’s services, pre, primary & high schools, nursing homes, private hospital, sporting fields & extremely well utilised parks & playgrounds, to additionally suffer from not only the emission hazards associated with the burning of coal, but now they are expected to endure the dust, blasting, trucks, lights & noise as it becomes open slather on their adjacent bushland as well?
Lake Macquarie is a unique, magnificent & geological marvel. The environment & biodiversity is Lake Macquarie. Its people know this & value it. These green spaces & the Lake itself are in effect people’s compensation, for what industry has already destroyed.
Centennial claimed at their last Open Day that they are there to listen to the communities view. Well Centennial the Community has spoken loudly & clearly & the Community says NO!
The people of Lake Macquarie made it very clear at the last election that No Open Cut Mining is welcome in their city. The government acknowledged this by banning Open Cut mining in Lake Macquarie.
Centennial now, are desperately trying to crawl through on a technicality that Auger Mining is not Open Cut. Claiming it is underground.
Well my Father & many in my extended family, along with many of our neighbours were & some are still, Coal Miners.
Underground Coal Miners, who had a saying that they learnt & earnt, it was “Mates Underground”.
My Father explained “Mates Underground”, to mean that you never left anyone below, you fought, you striked without pay, for safer & better conditions to avoid the deaths & many injuries that he had witnessed & endured. Mates Underground was a title shared by men, who would risk their lives every time they went down the mine shaft. Workers, who swallowed their nerves, went without daylight, used lamps & lighting and who tunnelled & had a propped roof above their head! Many of these men paid with their lives! Thankfully this risk, due to the efforts of these Underground miners before them, has been greatly reduced. However it is common knowledge that underground Miners are paid more due to risk entailed.
So when I hear Centennials cowardly claims used in their attempt to present auger mining as underground, it makes my blood boil, & in my view does a shameful disservice to the many true Mates Underground, those who have lost their lives, and to those who lived to tell the tales.
It also serves to remind us of just how low Centennial is prepared to go to manipulate definition to suit greed, with little regard for the proud history of this once reciprocating industry.
Centennial at least show some dignity, be honest, and admit your Olstan mine will have not have one mate underground!
Because quite simply you propose a series of open cut trenches, once combined effectively making the mine an open cut!
Centennial Coal’s proposed Olstan Open Cut Auger Mine will require open cut mining methods to reach the coal seams to be augered. Huge amounts of noise and dust will be generated from the surface mining and the surface transport of the coal. Westlakes residents of the City of Lake Macquarie successfully fought the proposed Centennial opencut mine at Awaba/Cooranbong 2 years ago and as a result the NSW State government introduced a State Environmental Planning Policy which prohibits any open cut mining activity in the City of Lake Macquarie. The health of 80,000 residents of the City that live within a 10km radius of the mine will be put at risk from breathing the airbourne dust particles. This includes residents of Toronto, Rathmines, Booragul, Bolton Point, Boolaroo, Warners Bay and Valentine. This mine should not be allowed to go ahead.
Centennial’s proposed Olstan Auger Mine will be an open-cut mine. No matter how they try to disguise it with words…the facts are out there.
A mine like this, near so many people?? We were promised, and laws were put in place, so this wouldn’t happen.
Such a mine would have dire consequences on the health of our residents and the environment. Dust, noise, environmental degradation, loss of habitat for fauna…the list goes on.
I, like many, have young children who attend school in West Lake Macquarie. I believe our children, as well as the rest of us, have the right to live in peace and health in our beautiful area.
On Facebook, I began a ‘No Olstan Auger Mine’ group. I had a 14 year old boy, who attends Toronto High, message me the other day. He said he supported the opposition against the mine. And this…
‘I wouldn’t really want to go to school anymore because of the dust…’
For the sake of us, our kids and our beautiful and unique environment…this mine absolutely cannot go ahead. I think enough damage has already been done.
THE COMMUNITY SAYS NO!!
Centennial Coal has announces a Community Information Evening at Blackalls Park Primary School on Thursday 11 June from 4:30PM to 8:30PM.
Come along and see for yourself what Centennial Coal is proposing.
Marvel at how, with some clever wording in the State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP), Centennial Coal will convert what is by any worthwhile definition an open-cut operation into an underground mine.
There will be full-frontal pictures to be seen and, now doubt, some awe-inspiring explanations to be made.
So come along and see if you will benefit or not from this mine.
Paul Moors
Congratulations to the Lake Macquarie City Council for exposing Centennial Coal’s Olstan Mine for what it is, an illegal operation. By any commonsense or mining definition, and by Centennial Coal’s own “Glossary of Terms”, this mine is an open-cut operation. It has all the detriments on the environment, ecology and community health and wellbeing of an open-cut operation. The community could be misled by believing this is an underground but it was because of the above detriments that the Government changed the State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP) to ban new open-cut mining in the Lake Macquarie area, so close to established and growing communities.
Some may say that the SEPP has a “grey area” in its definition of underground mining but, regardless of this, the proposed mining techniques are not suitable in a residential area.
Allowing Centennial Coal to exploit this “grey area” will open the door for other open-cut mines, thereby releasing a rich income stream for Centennial to the detriment of residents, environment and ecology from Fassifern to Morisset and wherever the dust blows.
There is no need for this mine. Centennial have said that they can supply replacement coal from elsewhere. The lights won’t go out.
I urge the Lord Mayor to write to all ratepayers alerting them to the detrimental impacts of this project.
New opencut mines were banned in 2007. Lets make sure the Government gets it right this time. Otherwise this will be another “Groundhog Day” event.
Glad to see that NBN has brought this horrendous open cut coal mining proposal to the attention of the general public. How this proposal can be consider underground by Centennial Coal is outrageous.
New open cut coal mines are banned in Lake Macquarie and what Centennial Coal propose is an open cut mine.
The health of the young and the elderly are at risk from Air pollution ie dust. Those already ill with respiratory disease could be compromised further.
Centennial leave the Awaba-Blackalls Park area alone. Your mine is not wanted.
If this mine goes ahead it sets a dangerous precedent for illegal mining in Lake Macquarie
NO! GO Centennial! You have had too much for too long & this proposal will deliver little coal…so what is your true agenda? I can only see this open-cut will be the precurser for many like mines in the Westlake/Wyong/Gosford areas…Be Active Residents & Fight this one with all your might because if you don’t the mighty China Miner will reign supreme!
It is time that Centennial Coal “came clean”, (pun fully intended). Their own web site has references to both its “Awaba underground Auger Mine” and its “Fassifern Open Cut Auger Mine”, (approved before the SEPP that they claim “defines” Auger Mining as Underground, because of the preface in said SEPP, however there is State Legislation that truly “defines” underground and surface/open cut mining, which has been passed by full State Parliament as opposed to the SEPP).
What Centennial now has to do is properly describe both the above mining activities to the public and government, compare the differences and apply those differences to their description to the “Olstan proposal”. (They might also like to link this process to the position that they put to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in 2004 where they argued that “It will be an open cut operation” in reference to the “Fassifern Open Cut/Auger Mine” to prevent underground mining wages to apply – was this a case of perjury, which should be further pursued, or is this a case of Centennial waxing and waning and putting up whatever argument suits them at the time).
I defy Centennial to address these issues honestly, (if that is at all possible), at their next so called “Community Information Evening at Blackalls Park Primary School on Thursday 11 June from 4:30PM to 8:30PM”.
The reason that I used the term “honestly” above is that at their first so called “Community Information” event held at the same venue on 14/03/09 I presented a word processed document of questions, only to find that the response changed a number of questions, (obviously to answer the “questions” that Centennial wanted to address), and as such did not receive the answers I required – I will continue to pursue this issue with them in the near future. (For anyone interested I am able to provide a document showing Centennial’s response to me plus the original, unanswered questions).
I strongly suggest that those attending their next “Community Information Evening” put a lot of thought into their major concerns and present them to Centennial’s reps in writing. Being the closest privately owned property to this proposed mine, (which if approved will cross our northern boundary from east to west and that of our neighbours – so much for the idyllic 10 acres in the bush, bought 34 years ago), apart from all the other issues, we dread the incessant safety “beep beep” of reversing heavy machinery day in day out. Currently we hear them from time to time from vehicles one km away, on the same or a lower elevation, not only 300-400 metres away along a ridge above our elevation meaning that the noise will travel for a much greater distance from our property. This is not a flippant comment but one that identifies one problem that many have probably not fully considered in terms of the noise issue. We are totally opposed to this proposal as we have been on three previous occasions dating back to the late ’70s and as on those previous occasions we will fight to the end and ensure that this proposal goes no further. Let’s keep up the good fight!!!!!!!!!
I heard the Centennial meeting has been canned by the company? So is that a NO?!
Must be thinking twice& taking deserved notice of the community sentiment of negativity towards the blatant lie they have professed! Good…Bye
Apparently Centennial Coal have just distributed a new newsletter to some residents in Blackalls Park. Claiming that due to delays within State Government, they are now unable to hold the Centennial Community Open Day on Thursday 11 June. Apparently Centennial arent able to answer community questions without the Govts information. I recall previously a Centennial advertorial claiming an open day would be held just after the Easter long weekend ( Lakes Mail). This just didnt happen. Then they claim this next open day would be held, coincidentally just after the June longweekend. Now cancelled. Well what do people anxious to learn more and have their questions PROPERLY answered do….What? do we wait for sometime after the next long weekend? October Maybe! Wake Up Centennial, u have no need to use the government as an excuse. Just stop this ridiculous proposal,& let people get on with their lives in peace!
Anxious and concerned community members have made contributions to this news item in an immediate manner, why is it that the proponent, Centennial Coal have not made a contribution?????? With all of their “spin doctoring” staff they should have by now come up with a “contra point of view”, or have they at last realised that there IS NOT A CONTRA VIEW JUST MORE SPIN & POORLY PLANNED SEMANTIC GAMES???????? CENTENNIAL JUST GET THE MESSAGE – GO AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Its an open cut mine, and as such is illegal – end of story. Centennial needs to show some integrity and and end this now and save themselves and residents alot of grief.
I woul like to support John Creagh’s call for Centennial to make some contribution to this discussion – Lets hear what you have to say – How can you the powers that be at Centennial lie straight in bed – ITS an OPEN CUT! and in case you havent yet heard – IN Lake Macquarie such an operation is forbidden l – Centennial go away!!!!!
Good on NBN News for covering the OLSTAN Project!
How many times does the community have to fight proposed OPEN CUT mining in Lake Macquarie???
The NSW State Government should honour the pledge that they made on the eve of the last STATE ELECTION to the community of Lake Macquarie! The community fought and won this battle before, this should not be happening! The State Government should step in and take control of a badly worded SEPP & make the changes NOW!
Centennial are trying to pass this as underground mining, what a load of CODDSWALLOP!!
There is trenching at least 40m wide in virgin bush for a total of 3.6km & its 30m deep! There will be blasting & constant dump truck movements!
If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck & quacks like a duck ……………………… it’s a DUCK!
I urge all of the community to get behind the groups such as BAM (Blackalls Park against the Mine), NOCMFA (No Open Cut For Awaba), URGE (The United Residents Group for the Environment of Lake Macquarie) & SCAM (South Lakes Community Against the Mine) so they can continue to do a magnificent job for the local community!
GO AWAY CENTENNIAL COAL!
Congratulations NBN for your report on this disgraceful plan by Centennial Coal.
It is not an underground mine, it is open-cut. We do not want open cut coal mining in Lake Macquarie. Open cut mining is illegal in Lake Macquarie. It’s all been said before. Why do we have to keep having this fight? Go away Centennial Coal!
Corporate greed creates irresponsible behaviour. Developing an open cut auger mine in a residential area would grossly irresponsible. This is where government regulation should protect the population and the environment. Why has the government not ruled this proposal out immediately? – It is illegal, after all.
No to this OPEN CUT Mine! No to Centennial Coal and their Legal Eagles picking the SEPP apart and looking for ‘grey areas of the law’. No to dust, noise and environmental destruction. No No No. Its not required, it is not wanted.
Bush land or Mine field?
Centennial – we are not a bunch of brain-dead hillbillies in this area. We know what you are up to and we are not fooled for one moment. We value our territory – we don’t intend to let you destroy it. We are interested in alternate, safer means of obtaining our electricity that won’t pollute both the land and our bodies. It is obvious that you are not caring or intelligent enough to consider the well being of thousands of people in an area that is obviously an ideal Tourist destination. I have seen the devastation in the once beautiful Hunter Valley – have friends and family who have been driven out of their homes and dairy farms by the dirty dust and noise and that makes me doubly doubtful of any statements you may make – you are not to be trusted. Yours is not the kind of industry we want and as for the worn out old chestnut about creating jobs! Spare us the lies! I’d be willing to wager that none of your Directors live next door to any of the areas that you have degraded because they love the coating oif coal dust on their clothes and food and the sound of continual noise and the sight of absolute ugliness surrounding them on every side. Wake up, get with it. In case you haven’t heard, there are other alternatives available and strange though it may seem to you, we know about them and intend to make the most of them, even though it might cost more we’ll be healthier and happier.
I support the views of many residents. Lake Macquarie does not need an open cut mine that will detract from the amenity of the area and the lifestyle of people who live within the vicinity.