The Hunter Valley’s Bulga Coal Management has been fined $65,000 over an incident in 2011, that lead to the leakage of hundreds of litres of slurry into a containment dam.
The company, which operates open-cut and underground mines, pleaded guilty to the water pollution charge in the Land and Environment Court today, which saw nearly 300 metres of Nine Mile creek smothered in coal tailings waste, with some of it up to 30 centimetres thick.
However, community group, Lock the Gate Alliance says it wants a guarantee it won’t reoccur.
“What we’d really like is an assurance that something like this can’t happen again,” a spokesman said.
