The rainwater release occurred between February 16 and March 26 under strict conditions to protect water quality.

The New South Wales coal mine was granted a variation to its Environmental Protection Licence by the NSW Environmental Protection Authority, to release up to 700Ml of rainwater into the Namoi River.

The site had been inundated by more than a billion litres of rainwater following unprecedented local rainfalls in November and January.

Rainwater releases have allowed Boggabri Coal to get back in business, protecting 450 jobs.

Mine owner Idemitsu executive director operations Peter Westerhuis said a lot of effort had gone into managing the releases to ensure downstream water quality was not adversely affected.

“We are not aware of any adverse impacts on downstream water users arising from our release,” he said.

Boggabri Coal also has committed to build additional on-site water storage facilities to manage any future flooding events. These facilities have been approved by the NSW government.

All the monitoring data from the rainwater releases has been published on the Boggabri Coal website.