The Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts is seeking public comment on mining the Nebo panels northeast of the former Elouera mine.

 

Gujarat plans to cut 3.6m of the Wongawilli seam in each of the six Nebo panels using retreat longwall mining and said void widths would vary between 60m and 120m.

 

The Australia-listed subsidiary of India’s Gujarat NRE Coke received NSW government approval of a subsidence management plan to continue mining panels 11, 12, 15, 16 and 19 along with Pillar Extraction Area 1 in July 2009, but is still awaiting full state environmental clearance.

 

The overall expansion of the operation is aimed to deliver 2.5 million tonnes per annum of raw coal from the Wongawilli seam for up to five years.

 

Gujarat will also augment and upgrade existing infrastructure at the Wongawilli mine under its underground expansion project.

 

Detailed in the preliminary environmental assessment prepared in August, Gujarat expects its workforce will reach 194 in the initial stages of longwall mining with 15 permanent employees and the rest employed as contractors.

 

Once the expansion kicks in, the company expects the workforce to reach 260 with mining conducted on a 24-7 basis.

 

The run-of-mine coal will not be washed before it is railed out to Port Kembla for export to India.

 

With the Nebo area underneath the Nepean River subcatchment, the Sydney Catchment Authority has already informed Gujarat it believes the mining of this new area has the potential to impact on water quantity and quality, along with catchment infrastructure works.

 

SCA said the environmental assessment of the project should address the relevant key findings and recommendations from the Planning Assessment Commission’s review report of Peabody’s Metropolitan expansion project, made last year.

 

Peabody gave the corporate approval to start its expansion of the Metropolitan longwall mine in late January, after a lengthy approval process which included a public hearing in Wollongong in March 2009.

 

Gujarat will establish a pillar between the total lengths of Nebo longwall panels 1 and 5 where it expects maximum subsidence, estimated to be less than 410mm.