Angus Place Extension Project.

I support the project for the sake of local jobs.

Lithgow region is very dependent on coal mining to provide employment for it's population. As a small business owner a reduction in employment wealth for the region would have a direct negative effect upon my businesses. My business as well as that of fellow business holders has already been greatly effected by the closure of other mines in the area. I appreciate the point of view of others who protest about the coal industry but ! I feel they really have not considered how much we all depend on coal.

I can't stress enough how important this project will be for local jobs and the community, a vital part in supporting the community.

Angus Place will continue to support a local workforce of up to 300 employees, it also has a good track record of mining in our local area with minimal impacts to environment.
Angus Place sponsors many local events and organisations such as world vision children, equipment for local hospitals and school fundraisers.

Angus place will continue to support up to 300 local employees, who will be spending their salary on local businesses and services, as well as their families in the area. Angus place has a good record with the environment and community as well as providing sponsorship for local community groups and organisations.

Angus place colliery will continue to support local sporting and community groups as well as provide sponsorship for under privileged members of the community. Angus place will also support a local work force of up to 300 employees.

This extension to Angus Place East is critical to the life of the Lithgow & surrounding areas as the 300+ employees support & spend money in the local area.
Angus Place has a great track record thus far & would continue to have into the future.
Let alone all the support Angus Place provide to local groups & charities.
This east project will help my & many more families remain in this district for many years to come.

The mining industry is what keeps our local area going forward, it is crucial for this to continue!
My family has a role in the mining industry & without it we would have to move away chasing work OR my husband would have to work away from home which would be devastating for our young family.

angus place supports the local work force of over 300 people this is great for the area.

angus place is involved in supporting local sporting teams throughout the community without there contribution teams would struggle..

Augus Place conbritues a lot to the community, It is one of the major business. Being an underground mine, it doesn't have an big impact to the environment.

Centennial Coal is extremely supportive to their local community. They provide financial support to many local associations, all sporting bodies and provides income directly to over 300 families, and indirectly to tens of thousands of people in the local area. Underground mining has minimal impact on the environment.
I also oppose the people who provide negative publicity to the mining industry. I have seen "Green" groups put photo's in our local paper with children standing in front of a local school sign. Their story stated that these children (all wearing dust masks) who attend the school, were suffering medically. I was working at that school, at that time, and NONE of these children were our students. This is the type of intentional lies these people weave in order to get there way. I also oppose people from other states in Australia giving their opposition when our livelihoods are jeopardised.

The company provideds 300 jobs to locals, They also support local sport and community activitys. The company has a good track record of low impact on the surronding environment. My family has lived in the area many of years and minning has been apart of our family for three generations.

Angus Place Colliery employs 300 local people & further employment throughout the district with associated businesses

It is a major supporter of local sporting clubs , social clubs etc

It is a major player in the training of our future generations with apprenticeships , traineeships , vacational work for university students & work experience for local school students

I am in strong support for Angus Places Expansion.

My husband and I both work in the mining industry. As such we have committed to the region and choosen this as the place we want to live.

Lithgow has a strong, proud history of mining which has seen many benefits for the community. If you walked down the street of Celebrate lithgow you would see the amazed looks of children looking at machinery and photos from the mines in the area who were excited about the their parents jobs.

Securing a future for our family and friends in the area is important. If mining continiues to have an uncertain future with the views of minority groups lobbeying only being heard Lithgow will no longer be a favourite town to visit.

We are a mining commmunity who want to stay in the area

Angus Place Colliery and the Mine Extension Project

Angus Place Colliery is a well-established underground coal mine, which has been operating for 35 years, with well-defined surface and mining environments. Due to knowledge gained from historical operations, Angus Place Colliery has an excellent understanding of mine design principles and requirements for the protection of surface features, and management of potential environmental impacts. The mine design, which has been successfully implemented in adjacent mining areas with minimal adverse impacts, shows in my opinion that Angus Place Colliery is committed to achieving sustainable development.

A key Project benefit is the sustainable mining of coal with no significant environmental impacts. The socio-economic output of the Project will continue to provide direct and indirect employment and flow on benefits to the Lithgow Government Area and the surrounding region. There will be an injection of approximately $699 million into the local, regional, state and national economies over the life of the Project. As such this is a state significant resource.

Based upon the predicted environmental impacts of the Project and the ability to manage these impacts to minimise harm to the environment, the Project will present an overall minimal residual consequence.

The EIS demonstrates that the Project meets environmental performance and socio-economic benefit requirements to be considered for approval.

The Project can be appropriately managed and results in residual consequences that do not have significant impacts on the receiving environment.


Angus Place Colliery as Part of the Local Community

The locally based workforce and their families are fully embedded within the Lithgow community, supporting a number of local businesses, sports facilities and community groups. Further, Angus Place Colliery and its employees provide financial contributions to local organisations and charities to assist with the upgrade and maintenance of equipment in addition to supporting others within the local community.


Closing Remarks

Angus Place Colliery has a good environmental record and strong community links within the locality in which it operates. Sustained operations at Angus Place Colliery are essential to offer continued local employment opportunities whilst providing a much needed resource to enable local electricity generation for NSW.

I have lived and worked in the lithgow area all my life and Angus place plays a huge part in this town not only for the 300 employees but the whole district,the shops in the area would not survive without the money the Angus place workers spend.not to mention the sponsorship and donations to the community,towns like this need these jobs.

Mining supports the local economy. In the Lithgow area many people rely directly and indirectly on the mines as well as the related businesses. Without the Springvale and Angus Place projects several hundreds of people will be without income and the local economy will suffer. These mines have been the livelihood for several generations, and now have the potential to continue.
Centennial has completed an extensive Environmental Assessments and understand the potential impacts. The EISs propose measures to manage these Impacts appropriately.
I support these projects. My family depends on these projects being approved. These projects should continue.

Doug Benson
Botanist/ Plant ecologist,

Comments on EIS for proposed Longwall Mine Extensions for Centennial Coal's Angus Place and Springvale Mines,
23 April 2014

My comments apply to both Angus Place and Springvale as the issues are the same. My comments are primarily concerned with the impacts of the mining on the endangered Newnes Plateau Shrub Swamps(NPSS) and their component flora. These impacts are likely to be most damaging through the results of mine subsidence and loss of water flow in the groundwater dependent ecosystems. The issues are as follows

1.I have had a long professional experience as a botanist and plant ecologist with the NPSS beginning in the late 1970s in searching for the rare species and subsequently mapping the vegetation and providing the first descriptions on the swamps (Benson and Keith 1990). At that time we were concerned about impacts of damage by the proposed Birds Rock Colliery in the 1980s which did not go ahead.This proposed colliery site directly affected swamps in the upper catchment of Carne Creek and we provided input on the swamps into the Public Inquiry at the time, so we had field experience of these swamps at that time. Many of the claims in the EIS assume that comments on previous conditions are invalid as the EIS uses only Centennial data which only begins recently.

2.I have also presented an account of the groundwater dependence of the swamps in the Carne Creek catchment in Benson and Baird (2010) and have argued that changes in the groundwater levels will have significant impacts on the swamp biodiversity, such that all measures should be taken to reduce subsidence impacts to a minimum. Primarily these should be to have no mining under the swamps as has protected Sunnyside Swamp, or if not possible to reduce the width of the longwalls which are proposed to be up to 261 m to between 115-160m as used elsewhere to reduce subsidence. Neither of these issues has been done for the Springvale Angus Place mining particularly under the Carne Creek catchments which are the most significant group of NPSS and. where drop in water levels is likely.

3.The impacts of past mining has been dealt with cursorily in the EIS which essentially argues that there have been no direct impacts on swamps by subsidence. There have clearly been impacts but these have been covered up by a) convenient absence of piezometer data for pre-mining conditions in some swamps (East Wolgan, Narrow), and b) confounding of the subsidence impacts by the large quantities (well outside approved levels) of excess mine water that were pumped through these two important swamps .

4.Impacts of mining on the swamps have been also obscured by the assignment of swamps in about 2008 as either dry or wet swamps, and the failure to update these with subsequent knowledge, thus the swamps denoted as dry swamps - West Wolgan, Kangaroo Creek, and incorrectly in my view East Wolgan and Narrow), were by definition not going to be impacted by subsidence on groundwater or at least this would not be evident for several decades and therefore not detectable. This classification did have some foundation in our 1990 work (Benson & Keith) which described some of the western swamps on th upper plateau as being more clay-based with a predominance of Leptospermum species. This does apply to West Wolgan, and Kangaroo Creek Upper (confirmed in Benson & Baird) but does not apply to East Wolgan and Narrow which are valley floor swamps and typical of the wet Type A in geomophology and air photo interpretation. Both swamps have now been severely degraded by mining impacts (Goldney et al 2010) and acknowledged in the imposition of the Enforceable Undertaking, though the impacts of the excess mine water is conveniently used as cause of the damage, damage which has left the drainage line of East Wolgan in particular a 30m wide stretch of bare dry earth with no evidence of recovery after nearly 6 years. While this may be partly due to the impact of the chemicals composition of the excess mine water, the real longterm environmental impact is the absence of any flow in the drainage line. As a wet Type A swamp it would have had a permanent surface flow as is evident in the other Type A swamps of Carne West Swamp but there has been no flow in East Wolgan since the undermining in 2008. I visited Narrow Swamp in 2008 and East Wolgan in 2009 immediately after the impacts (i.e. the big holes) were evident and from the plant species evident in the remaining vegetation at that time we could see that these were groundwater dependent Type A swamps. Centennial has refused to correct the classification on the ground that they did not see the pre-mining conditions, and that there is no groundwater data piezometers for the premining conditions. However there is data from Junction Swamp which is further upstream on the same drainage line as East Wolgan. Data from here was recorded from c. 2005 and the stream has a measuring weir of a size indicating that it was for recording substantial flows yet has been dry certainly since 2008. Goldney et al and M. Krogh pers. comm have shown that both Junction and Kangaroo Creek Lower have had subsidence impacts and that the previous more or less permanent water flows in these drainage lines has disappeared.

5.East Wolgan and probably Narrow Swamps appear to be suffering similarly, and it can be expected that the remaining swamp vegetation will gradually dry out and change, probably after a major bushfire that will probably kill off remaining swamp plants and allow woodland species to invade. The death of the characteristic groundwater dependent species Gymnoschoenus plants on the edges of Junction swamps is already (March 2014) occurring.

6.The EIS data states that maximum observed subsidence recorded in undermined swamps at Springvale and Angus Place are 1-1.4m and it is clear that there have been impacts that have changed the water flow conditions in the catchments and swamps of Kangaroo Creek, Wolgan East and likely in Narrow Swamp. These make up the main swamps that have been undermined with longwall mining and the EIS proposes similar longwall mining treatment is to be applied to Sunnyside East Swamp, Carne West Swamp, GangGang swamp south west, Gang Gang swamp East, pine Swamp, Nine mile swamp, Pine upper swamp, Paddys Creek Swamp, and Marrangaroo Creek Upper swamp and Marrangaroo Creek Swamp. These swamps form the best groundwater dependent of all the NPSS with the highest components of endangered biodiversity (B&B).

7.The EIS states that "modelling has predicted that changes to the watertable heights and baseflow may occur to a limited extent as a result of subsidence (RPS 2014a)" but that "monitoring of swamp water-levels and surface water gauging has shown over the life of the current mining operations that no impacts to the swamps or surface water flows have occurred as a result of mining to date at Springvale". This reference to Springvale is plainly misleading as the impacts described above (particularly at East Wolgan) have occurred in the immediately adjacent area of Angus Place and are completely relevant to determining the impacts at Springvale.

8.That Centennial now indicate that "changes to the watertable heights and baseflow may occur to a limited extent as a result of subsidence" is a warning sign. Our field experience in the NPSS indicates that the swamp species and patterns are closely related to soil moisture and surface morphology and that any waterlevel drawdown of water levels will have major impacts. The roots of the swamp species are concentrated and generally restricted to the restricted to the top 30-50 cm of substrate so drawdown in any swamp of 15-25 cm is likely to affect much of the vegetation area as permanently wet conditions are replaced by ephemerally wet, and ephemerally wet conditions become permanently dry with consequent loss of species. An indication of the rate of change is the death of the longlived but moisture dependent sedge Gymnoschoenus at Junction Swamp which is only now evident 8-10 years after mining.

9.Modelling data in the EIS indicate that there will be drawdown in all the swamps with a maximum drop of 36 cm in Gang Gang Southeast Swamp, though the EIS does not think this will cause any impact, though if one considers the ecological dynamics in the swamp it is evident that a permanent waterlevel drop of 36 cm will cause major drying out of surface substrate and dislocation of swamp species. It is likely that these water level changes will be permanent and result in reduction in size of the swamps over time as swamps gradually dry out and are invaded by woodland species. Certainly the East Wolgan drainage line has been completely drysince for the last 5 years and is showing no sign of recovery when I visited in March 2014.

Conclusion
Despite the repeated statements by Centennial that there will be no impacts from longwall mining on the threatened NPSS swamps,the EIS clearly provides evidence that such impacts are likely. Centennial's argument is that their monitoring does not show any significant impacts but this is based on their past monitoring that has involved a history of inadequate sampling, monitoring without adequate pre mining data, and minewater issues masking likely evidence of subsidence, as well a poor understanding of swamp ecology. It is clear from the groundwater modelling that the NPSS will be impacted by the proposed mining operations at Springvale and Angus Place. These NPSS swamps particularly those in Carne Creek catchment are of great scientific and biological value and must not be impacted by the proposed mining. This can be achieved by not mining under individual swamps, or by using bord and pillar operations or by sustantially reducing the longwall dimensions. Proposed longwall are to be up to 261m width but in area where subsidence is to be reduced longwall widths are 115-160m. These measures must be taken if we want the swamps to survive as they are at present, rather than dried out and invaded by woodland species.


References
Benson D & Baird I (2012) Vegetation, fauna and groundwater interrelations in low nutrient temperate montane peat swamps in the upper Blue Mountains NSW Cunninghamia 12, 267-307.
Benson D & Keith D (1990) Natural vegetation of the Wallerawang1:100 000 map sheet. Cunninghamia 2, 305-335.
Goldney D, Mactaggart B & Merrick N (2010) Determining whether or not a significant impact has occurred on Temperate Highland Peat swamps on sandstone within the Angus Place Colliery Lease on the Newnes Plateau. Prepared for Dept of Environment Water Heritage and the Arts January 2010.

angus place will continue to support a local workforce of up to 300 employees.