Last month Rivers SOS, an alliance of about 40 environmental and community groups, challenged the New South Wales Department of Planning for approving the mine expansion earlier in the year.

But yesterday the LEC dismissed the proceedings, ruling that Rivers “has not made any of the grounds of challenge to the approval”

A Rivers spokesperson told ABC the case had shown no appeal could be made against Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act and that the group had to work to get Part 3A abolished.

The expansion will see the longwall mine, near Helensburgh, ramp up from 1.5 million tonnes to 3Mt of run-of-mine coal a year from the Bulli seam for 25 years.

It is expected 2.8Mt per annum of hard and semi-hard coking coal will be produced for export and domestic markets.

Infrastructure development includes an upgrade to the coal handling and processing plant to reach throughput of around 600t per hour.