Whitehaven wants to increase its approved Vickery coal project to operate an up to 10 million tonnes per annum open cut metallurgical and thermal coal mine, with onsite processing and rail infrastructure.
Vickery will have to establish and maintain a network of groundwater monitoring bores designed to detect changes in groundwater levels and include bores that are co-located or paired with surface water monitoring sites to allow monitoring and analysis of groundwater-surface water interactions.
These monitoring bores must be installed prior to the start of mining operations.
Vickery will also have to monitor groundwater levels in each bore at least once every
three months, starting within one week of the start of mining operations for the life of this approval.
The monitoring data must include hydrographs for the bore network and explain what the data means in relation to the groundwater performance measures specified in the state development consent.
As the approval holder it will have to submit performance criteria and limits, relevant to groundwater extraction impacts for the alluvial aquifer, for the minister's approval.
That information has to be accompanied by evidence-based justification of how Whitehaven derived from the results of monitoring, consider groundwater-surface water connectivity, and are suitable.
Whitehaven said the EPBC approval was the culmination of an exhaustive process of technical evaluation and stakeholder consultation at both the state and federal levels spanning five years.
"This included a period of public exhibition administered by the NSW Department of Planning and the Environment, which elicited 560 public submissions, 62% of which called for the project to be approved in recognition of the substantial local economic benefits it offered, among other things," it said.
The NSW Independent Planning Commission approved the project in August 2020.
In May the Federal Court stopped short of preventing Ley from approving the Vickery mine extension project under a court action brought by eight teenage students.
In Sharma and others v Minister for the Environment the court accepted evidence brought by independent experts that carbon emissions released from mining and burning fossil fuels would contribute to wide-ranging harms to young people.
The judgment directs that the environment minister should not make decisions that harm young people and the judge called upon the parties to confer on orders over the future of the proposed project.
"Against the current backdrop of record high coal prices and strong demand in seaborne markets, the company sees a continuing role for high-quality coal of the type Vickery will produce in contributing to global CO2 emissions reduction and containment efforts while simultaneously supporting economic development in our near region," Whitehaven said.
"Major employment-generating investments will be essential as the Australian economy continues to recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic."
