Hunter Valley Mine Approved

Coal miners in Australia’s Hunter Valley have received preliminary approval to expand their mining pits in what could be a devastating turn of events for local Thoroughbred operations, including Darley and Coolmore’s Australian satellites.

The expansion proposal by the mining company, Anglo American, was rejected last year by the Planning and Assessment Commission for concerns of its affects on local studs and wineries. The New South Wales planning and development department, however, reportedly gave preliminary approval for a scaled back version of the plans this week.

“They have basically relied on the mining proponents’ revised environmental impact statement, which states that they are going to mine now on a much smaller footprint and that they have come back behind a buffer line,” Darley Australia’s Managing Director Henry Plumptre told Racing.com. “What they have actually done is instead of being 500 meters from the front gates at [Darley] Woodlands and Coolmore, they are now going to be 900 meters. They have moved the mining footprint 400 meters, which is completely irrelevant to the main problem. The bigger issue, which this government is ignoring–and it is something that we have asked them to think about–is the question of what happens to that region in the next 25 years.”

Those against the mines cite that the industry has a short lifespan; once the land is mined, it is no longer usable, and thus mining has long-term negative implications. Mining.com reports that under the revised proposal, “the open pit will have to remain behind a natural ridge line and leave a buffer zone…resulting in about 100 million tonnes of coal resource being left untapped.”