New South Wales planning body says controversial Mount Thorley-Warkworth mine extension should go ahead, and suggests village of Bulga could be moved

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The relocation of the entire village of Bulga due to the expansion of a nearby coalmine should be given “serious consideration”, according to a New South Wales government review.

The NSW Planning Assessment Commission, an independent statutory body, recommended on Thursday that Rio Tinto’s controversial Mount Thorley-Warkworth mine extension should go ahead.

The PAC’s report, however, found that the expansion would have a “range of adverse impacts” upon the nearby village of Bulga, home to around 350 people. The enlarged mine would come within 3km of Bulga.

To mitigate this, the report recommends residents should be compensated if they wish to sell their properties or, more radically, that Bulga be completely moved to an unspecified location to escape the dust and noise of the mine.

“Such relocations are undertaken already in dam approvals,” the report states. “Any relocation decision and associated planning would, of course, need to involve the residents of Bulga.

“It is recognised that this option is not an approach that would generally be considered, however the commission believes that in this instance there are a unique and unusual set of circumstances that make it worthy of serious consideration.”

The report concedes that the relocation idea, which would be funded by taxpayers and Rio Tinto, has not been canvassed with residents during the five years of often bitter debate over the viability of the mine extension.

Opponents of the mine have won two court cases, in the Land and Environment court and a supreme court appeal, against the mine’s expansion. Despite this, the approval of the mine development is still under consideration by the NSW government.

Paul Harris, a 54 year-old miner who has worked at the Warkworth mine for 30 years while also living in Bulga, said the relocation suggestion is “plain stupidity.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paul Harris, a 54 year-old miner who has worked at the Warkworth mine for 30 years and lives in Bulga, says the idea of relocating the village is “plain stupidity.” Photograph: Dean Sewell

“I think the PAC is really out of touch, this village is a sprawl, I’m not sure how you’d relocate everyone,” he told Guardian Australia.

“I’ve been in Bulga all my life, I haven’t bloody blown in for bloody work. We used to use small gear and noise would never be a problem but now we’ve got to endure dust and noise every day for years, apart from Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

“I can’t sit out in my back yard and enjoy a beer because of the noise. The dust is a shocker, I can’t filter it out of my pool. Yesterday, we couldn’t even see the hills because of the dust.

“If this process gets the green light, we are resigned to moving. I love my place here, I built it to stay here for the next generations but it’s being destroyed. When they blow the rocks up, the ground movement is like living in bloody Christchurch or something.”

Harris’s neighbour, 70-year-old local historian Stewart Mitchell, has also lived in Bulga all his life.

“The idea of relocating has not been discussed in the past, it has come out of the blue,” Mitchell told Guardian Australia. “They talk about relocating the village but there’s no mention of the neighbouring properties. How do you relocate a 180-acre property?

“The first response here was it was some sort of joke. It’s ludicrous that taxpayer money could be used for this. People don’t want to move and it’s been very stressful over the past five years because of the devaluation of properties.

“It’s important that the report concedes that we can’t coexist with the mine, though. If it goes ahead, Bulga will be destroyed, as it’ll just be a stone’s throw away.”

The expansion of the mine will involve the digging up of a further 230m tonnes of coal over a 21-year period, at a rate of 18m tonnes a year, which would account for 10% of NSW’s total volume of export coal.

This enlargement will swallow up an extra 698 hectares, including 459 hectares of endangered ecological habitat.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An aerial view of Rio Tinto’s Mount Thorley-Warkworth mine. Photograph: Dean Sewell

The PAC report states the expansion would safeguard 1,187 jobs over the next 14 years, provide $567m in royalties and there would be “substantial adverse economic impacts” to the towns of Singleton and Cessnock if the project doesn’t go ahead.

A Rio Tinto spokesman told Guardian Australia that it would await the NSW government’s response to the report before commenting on the viability of moving Bulga.

“We have followed due process at all times,” the spokesman said. “We are committed to working with the people of Bulga and believe the village has a strong future.”

Rio Tinto said there were more than 2,000 submissions from locals and businesses in favour of the mine extension and pointed out that it would provide more than 1,800 hectares of land towards a national park in the Upper Hunter region as part of biodiversity “offsets”.

A spokesman for the NSW department of planning and environment said: “The department of planning and environment will consider the PAC’s review as its assessment is finalised.

“Once the final assessment is complete, the independent PAC will make the final determination.”