Locals and advocates have been left “devastated” and concerned about the environmental impacts of the New South Wales government’s decision to allow Whitehaven Coal to bury used tyres onsite at the Maules Creek coalmine.
The government approved Whitehaven’s modification application on 14 January to allow off-the-road (OTR) tyres that can no longer be used at the mine to be buried within the mine’s waste rock emplacement areas, “subject to appropriate environmental controls”.
The approval comes after the Maules Creek coalmine was in 2021 found to be one of six open-cut coalmines in the Namoi and Liverpool plains regions burying tyres without the necessary licence conditions. The investigation, conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), resulted in all six mines receiving official cautions.
The company was also fined $200,000 in the NSW land and environment court on Wednesday after it entered a guilty plea for taking 1bn litres of surface water without a licence over three years from 2016 to 2019.
Sally Hunter, a grazier in Maules Creeks, said the tyre burials are “an atrocious plan”.
“The biggest thing for me is that Whitehaven are just these endless environmental criminals … They’ve been burying these tyres for quite some time. Now they’ve finally got permission to do such a terribly environmentally damaging thing,” Hunter said.
Georgina Woods, a national campaigner for Lock the Gate Alliance, said they were disappointed.
“The department of planning has once again granted the Maules Creek mine and Whitehaven Coal permission to do something that they had already done illegally, compromising the environmental integrity of the operation,” Woods said.
She said that previously the Maules Creek mine had built two pipelines to pipe water from irrigation bores on properties off the mine site in order to keep the mine running during one of the worst droughts on record in the Namoi.
The department later granted a modification of the mine to give approval for those pipelines after they were already built.
In regards to the tyre burials, Woods said there hasn’t been an adequate environmental study conducted prior to the approval, leaving it unclear what the implications would be for local groundwater quality.
Libby Laird, the president of the Maules Creek branch of the Country Women’s Association of NSW, said locals were particularly concerned that the mine sits in the Maules Creek water resource.
“[We are] devastated and pretty exhausted by the constant approvals of things that leave long-term impacts to our local environments,” Laird said.
A spokesperson for the NSW environment department has said “after a thorough assessment and consultation with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Resources Regulator, the department found that the practice would have minimal environmental impact”.
“Burial of larger off-the-road tyres is standard practice in the mining industry because of the size of the tyres, the remoteness of sites and no suitable recycling facility being available,” the spokesperson said.
But the department’s assessment report acknowledged “incorrect tyre disposal methods can result in leaching of oils or heavy metals into groundwater and tyres can provide a fuel source that increases the risks of fire. However, these risks can be managed by appropriate emplacement of the tyres”.
The report also stated that the EPA had confirmed that a variation to the environment protection licence would include a suite of “specific waste tyre management conditions to ensure the implementation of adequate environmental controls and the regular review of alternative waste disposal and/or recycling options”.
A Whitehaven Coal spokesperson told Guardian Australia the on-site disposal of tyres is permissible in NSW under certain circumstances and was a practice observed by industry participants in jurisdictions around Australia.
“We acknowledge the interest in, and importance of, good tyre stewardship; it is an area industry is looking at more closely and Whitehaven is committed to reviewing its approach regularly to assess the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of alternative approaches.”
But Hunter said the aquifer area is highly connected with Maules Creek running into the Namoi River, which runs into the Murray Darling basin.
“I’m a gardener. I don’t put tyres in my garden because I don’t want those toxic chemicals leaching into my food that I’m going to eat. It’s absolutely no different to have these tyres leaching into our aquifer,” she said.
“This is a cost for them to do business, to recycle responsibly all their tyres. They don’t factor that cost into doing business and it’s the environment, the locals and the water table that have to pay.”
Shanna Whan, the chief executive of bush charity Sober in the Country who relocated to Maules Creek in the last year, said she doesn’t believe the assurances given, based on the lack of community consultation Whitehaven has shown so far.
“How am I supposed to be anything other sceptical?” she said.
Woods said the burial of the tyres contravenes NSW’s waste hierarchy, which stipulates that if waste products can’t be reused, they must be recycled, with disposal at the very bottom of the waste hierarchy.
However, she said the only places that recycle big tyres are much farther afield, such as Brisbane.
“This is classic instance where shortcuts have been taken by this mining company Whitehaven Coal in order to save themselves the money,” Woods said.
