1.2.3.1.19 Spur Hill Project

The Spur Hill Project is wholly owned by Malabar Coal Ltd (Malabar Coal). Located in the Upper Hunter Valley, it is 3 km east of Denman and 15 km south-west of Muswellbrook (Malabar Coal, 2015). The exploration activities and environmental studies began in January 2012. On 10 December 2013, Malabar Coal received approval to undertake the Spur Hill Coal Exploration Drilling Program. During environmental studies it has been shown that changes to agricultural productivity will not be significant over the long term (Spur Hill, 2013a, p. 25) and that activities will not affect the environment or threatened species, populations or ecological communities (Spur Hill, 2013b, ES-2).

The proposed underground mine is expected to produce coking coal using the longwall mining method (Spur Hill, 2015). The production will be approximately 154 Mt of ROM coal over the life of mine, which represents up to 8 Mt/year ROM coal (mine life up to 25 years, including construction, development and operation). A total resource of 625.9 Mt is reported (Spur Hill, 2015). Facilities such as a CHPP, rail spur and loop are proposed for handling, processing and transporting coal. The project will develop a water management system comprising water storages, sumps, pumps, pipelines, sediment control, mine dewatering and sewage treatment facilities (Spur Hill, 2013a, p. 9). The rehabilitation of disturbed areas will be progressive during the mine life and the rehabilitation of mine-related infrastructure areas will occur at the end of the project (Spur Hill, 2013a, p. 9). As at 25 March 2015, only Director General’s Requirements were issued but no EIS has been submitted for Spur Hill.