The deadline for Wollongong Coal to complete promised realignment work on Bellambi Creek is today – more than five years after a first deadline expired.
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But the work has not been done, despite being one of the conditions for approval in 2011 of mining at Russell Vale – because it would reduce pollution downstream.
Residents group Illawarra Residents for Responsible Mining says the Department of Planning and Environment must do its job enforcing mine conditions.
“The department has been pathetic in enforcing compliance,” IRRM spokesman Gavin Workman said.
“Bellambi Creek realignment was required to be finalised by October, 2012 yet it still has not been started.”
In 2016 DPE eventually ordered an underground pipe section of the creek be replaced within 18 months. That deadline was today. The work is undone.
“The mining company has long since mined and sold the coal that was covered by the 2011 PWP approval – and yet the conditions of that approval still have not been met,” Mr Workman said.
Runoff from the mine and its coal waste storage areas is washed down into the creek, then to the sea, whenever there is major rainfall.
“It is farcical that six years after the creek realignment was required to be finished, the state government is doing nothing.
“In doing so they are complicit in the serial pollution of Bellambi Creek and putting residents downstream of the colliery at risk of flooding.”
Late on Friday the department revealed it had given the miner another 12-month extension.
“The proponent has lodged an application with the department to modify the PWP consent to substitute the diversion work with the upgrade and maintenance proposal,” a spokesman said.
The Department has extended the time for compliance with the development control order for a further 12 months to await the assessment and determination of the current modification application and [a] flood study by [Wollongong City] Council.”
Mr Workman said this was another “backdown” by DPE, which he said was “gutless”.
“It’s now going to be seven years that it’s overdue,” he said.
“How can we as a community believe anything the department says anymore when they just continually back down?”