A creek running through the Royal national park, south of Sydney, has been hit by a coal wastewater spill that turned its water into thick, black sludge.
It is the third coal pollution incident investigated by the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority this year involving Peabody Energy’s Metropolitan mine at Helensburg.
Conservationists reported seeing “inky black water” flowing through the park’s bushland. The NSW Greens say they want to know whether it will affect the state government’s plans to reintroduce platypuses to the area.
The NSW environment minister, James Griffin, said on Tuesday he had sought an urgent briefing from the EPA.
“I have spoken directly with the company to express my deep concerns and my immediate focus is on ensuring that remediation occurs as an urgent priority,” he said.
The pollution, which followed heavy rain, occurred after surface water and sediment at the mine site overflowed into Camp Gully Creek, a tributary of the Hacking River.
Peabody Energy was fined $15,000 in June for polluting a local waterway. Two months later, another overflow event prompted a new condition for the mine’s licence.
James McCormack, editor of Wild Magazine, was running through the Camp Gully Creek area last Tuesday when he saw the water looked like “thick and black slush”.
“Inky black water was flowing through otherwise beautiful rainforest trees,” he said.
“If we can’t look after the world’s second oldest national park, then what can we look after?”
Sue Higginson, the NSW Greens environment spokesperson, visited later that week.
She walked through forest and past the clear water of the Hacking River towards the confluence where Camp Gully begins.
“All I could see was ballooning black water meeting the clean water of Hacking River.”
Walking further up Camp Gully, Higginson said her hands were stained black after picking up rocks from the base of the creek.
“You could just see the black cloudy water and black sludge attaching to the base of the creek and the rocks on the edge of the creek.”
Higginson said she would ask the government whether the pollution would further delay plans to reintroduce platypuses to the national park. Those plans were paused in April after flooding across NSW.
A spokesperson for the EPA said the authority was investigating the pollution and had issued the company with a prevention notice that required it to take immediate action to prevent further incidents.
This included improving stormwater management practices and monitoring, increasing stormwater storage capacity, and developing more stringent water quality standards before releasing wastewater from the site.
EPA officers have collected water samples and were conducting further assessments this week to determine the ecological impact on the creek.
“The EPA will take regulatory action if the investigation identifies any breaches,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for Peabody said 2,500mm of rain fell at the mine site between January and the end of July, nearly double its expected annual rainfall.
The spokesperson said the company was working with the EPA to address the effects of more recent heavy rainfall and had conducted an independent review of surface water management.
They said a program of civil works to improve the management of excess stormwater was under way, and external environmental experts were assessing any damage to waterways and would advise on remediation measures.
“Peabody takes its environmental responsibilities seriously and the company has taken immediate actions to rectify issues brought to light by extreme rain that affected the Illawarra region in the first half of this year,” they said.
The spokesperson said the company’s own environmental management staff had carried out remediation in the immediate vicinity of the mine and Peabody was committed to “any further activities that may be required in nearby waterways to improve environmental outcomes”.
