The company recently revised its previous mining plans in response to a New South Wales Planning Assessment Commission report released in July, plus submissions from other stakeholders during the environmental approval process.

Illawarra revealed the revised production schedule and other figures last week.

The company completely removed the North Cliff and Appin Area 2 domains in its new “preferred project report” application.

The majority of the Appin Area 3 domain and two longwall panels off the West Cliff Area 5 domain were also removed.

These adjustments are expected to reduce the total recoverable coal reserve from 306 million tonnes of raw coal under the previous plan to 209Mt.

Illawarra is removing subsidence concerns with its new proposal and consequently the amount of coal wash to be emplaced underground under stage 4 mining will be cut from 40Mt to 26Mt.

This is also expected to cut the emplacement height by 34m.

The smaller emplacement footprint, located within the West Cliff surface lease, allows Illawarra to keep its Brennans Creek Dam storage capacity and stockpile areas.

The revised emplacement plan also reduces the amount of vegetation to be cleared by five hectares.

While the changes protect against potential impacts to streams, upland swamps, cliff lines, forest and indigenous sites, Illawarra still aims to keep the project life of 30 years.

The company still seeks approval to extract up to 10.5 million tonnes per annum of run of mine coal and an annual transport rate of 9.3Mtpa.

But the revised mining plan does have economic impacts.

The net production benefit has been cut by 33% from the previous estimate of $A10.3 billion to $6.9 billion.

Royalties contributions to the state government are down from $3 billion to $2 billion.

The forecast for total direct and indirect jobs in the state created by the project over 30 years was reduced 19% from 5791 to 4676.

The estimate for the direct and indirect business turnover contribution to the regional economy was reduced 3% from $2.07 billion to $2 billion.

Production schedule

Under the previous plan, production was expected to hit 10.5Mtpa ROM for 6.3Mtpa by the second year.

The new plan will extract 7.5Mtpa ROM for 6.3Mtpa of product coal in the first two years.

The best yields are expected in the fifth year with 9.3Mtpa of product coal.

But in the sixth year extraction will drop to 7.5Mtpa ROM for around 6.3Mtpa of product coal for the next seven years.

From years 15 to 21 extraction is expected to be 6.5Mtpa ROM, and for the remaining nine years it is scheduled to be 5.5Mtpa ROM with a total of 176.6Mt of product coal expected to be produced over the 30-year mine life.

Revised environmental impacts

The revised plan eliminates underground mining near the Dharawal State Conservation Area plus areas near the Woronora River, Cataract River and O'Hares Creek at the top of the Georges River catchment.

Potential impacts to about 72km of streams was removed, with 18 streams no longer affected by the new mine plan.

Illawarra removed all 226 upland swamps from potential impacts.

The amount of cliff lines above underground mining areas was cut from 611 to 290.

Aboriginal heritage sites above mining areas were slashed from 632 to 160, including 12 of the 14 with “high archaeological significance”

About 205 hectares of mapped threatened ecological communities above mining areas was removed, along with 11,360ha of mapped vegetation.

TEC response

While the Bulli Seams Operations project remains under assessment by the NSW Planning Department, the Total Environment Centre claimed the reputation of longwall mining had suffered a “serious blow”.

“BHP Billiton and its consultants were clearly indulging in greenwash when they originally said there would not be serious impacts, but at last they have listened to the valid concerns from environmentalists and the community,” TEC executive director Jeff Angel said.

“We hope this signals an ongoing sensitivity to the long-term environment impact of the mining industry in Australia.”

Angel remained sceptical and said BHP made it clear it was not giving up on the mining areas removed under the revised plan but was “putting them on hold indefinitely”

“We will have to be vigilant. TEC and the community will now have to address the massive Gujarat scheme for mining under the catchments – the next mine expansion in this pristine area which Australians will still need long after the mining industry has moved on.”

BHP concluded its revised project application would minimise environment impacts and stated there was no further requirement for assessment of the removed domains.