Ultimately the PAC was not convinced that the mining plans sufficiently covered all environmental bases and made 25 recommendations to get the project compliant– which included excising some land of the designated mining areas.

“The Commission considers that the mine is approvable, subject to some further water modelling to corroborate the predicted level of impact on water,” PAC said.

“The Commission has made some recommendations relating to conditions that must be applied to any consent for this mine, but the suitability of the [Planning] Department’s draft conditions will need to be further considered in finalising the assessment of this project.”

On the PAC outcome, NSW Farmers’ president Fiona Simson said its members would be “gutted”

“The commission has rightly identified that the mine would be located in the middle of some of the most significant and valuable agricultural land in the country, but has underestimated the actions needed to ensure the long term viability of farming in the area,” she said.

“The commission has also clearly identified massive flaws in the water data presented by the proponent and more water modelling will not fix the irreversible damage to aquifers the project will cause.

“Until governments and corporates start listening to communities and their fears about the future of their land and water, they can forget about building any trust. “We will work through the report over the coming days but we strongly believe it is past time the NSW government drew a line in the sand and protected our land, water and livelihoods.”

Federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce reportedly said the Liverpool Plains was not suitable for coal mining but it was a state, not a federal, matter.

"There are so many other places in Australia which are appropriate for a coal mine, [and] I've always had a concern about the aquifers in that region, and the prime agricultural land," he told the ABC.

In its recent assessment, PAC said the land proposed to be mined was not the highly fertile rich soil of the surrounding Liverpool Plains but it was “clearly productive grazing land, with some capacity for cropping in certain areas”.

The $850 million Watermark open cut project is targeting up to 10 million tonnes per annum run of mine over 30 years with about 84% of the saleable coal to be of a metallurgical grade.