'Outrageous': Coal mine gets expansion nod despite secret, incomplete studies

Fitter David Crehan stands near a long
wall shearer at the Dendrobium mine 
 at Mount Kembla.

The Baird government has approved the expansion of the most aggressive coal mine in the Special Areas of Greater Sydney's catchment despite not knowing the compounding impact it will have on water supplies.

South32 won approval for two more 305 metre-wide longwalls at its Dendrobium mine, extracting coal from underneath the Metropolitan Special Area which was created to protect the waters of the Avon, Cataract, Cordeaux and Nepean reservoirs.

The company, which was spun out of BHP Billiton, hailed the go-ahead as securing as many as 400 jobs. The coking coal produced at the mine supplies a steel mill in nearby Wollongong and export markets.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in The Sydney Morning Herald - “'Outrageous': Coal mine gets expansion nod despite secret, incomplete studies.”