On Saturday 19th July, nearly 30 Oberon residents attended a community consultation meeting with Mudgee Stone Company and their environmental consultants, RW Corkery and Co, to receive information about the impacts on the environment and on surrounding residents of the proposed Oberon White Granite Quarry Extension.
Residents raised a number of concerns, including noise, dust, visual impacts, impact on springs and bores and the lack of economic benefits of the extension flowing to Oberon businesses.
Residents also raised concerns about the lack of compliance by Mudgee Stone Quarry with their current consent conditions, including using a rock hammer when they were unauthorised to do so, clearing a larger area of vegetation than approved and changing the extraction area boundary without consent.
This poor track record has meant that the community lack confidence in the way that future operations would be undertaken, including that operational controls to limit noise and dust would actually be followed.
The lack of community involvement in the process to date was also raised.
The consultants provided a very brief overview of the impacts of the quarry extension, with a number of questions from the community on the way they had assessed various areas.
The economic justification for the proposal also received many questions from the community, especially when Mudgee Stone Company stated that only about 20-30% of the haulage would come from local companies.
At the meeting Mudgee Stone Company and RW Corkery committed to include in the Statement of Commitments, which will form part of the consent conditions issued by the Minister for Planning, that:
* Mudgee Stone Company will lodge a security bond with the Department of Planning to ensure that in the event of Mudgee Stone Company not having the money to properly rehabilitate the site at the conclusion of quarrying, the DoP will be able to pay someone to ensure that rehabilitation is properly undertaken.
Additional money will be paid into the security bond as extraction progresses, in recognition of the greater environmental damage occurring as extraction progresses.
* Validation of the noise modelling will be undertaken in the first 3 months of expanded quarry operations.
This will ensure that predicted noise levels from the use of rock hammers and other machinery are not above the levels predicted and that residences are not adversely affected.
* A community consultative committee will be established as part of the extended operation.
* A monitoring plan, including external audits, will be undertaken to ensure that the environmental impact, and impact on surrounding landholders, is as predicted in the Environmental Assessment.
Other things that Mudgee Stone Company and RW Corkery committed to were:
* The Environmental Assessment will include information to assess the risk of silicosis on the surrounding community
* Information on local springs and the effect of the expanded operations on these local springs will be predicted in the EA.
If springs dry up as a result of expanded quarrying operations, Mudgee Stone Company will ensure that the landholder has an alternative water source e.g. they will pay for the cost of sinking a bore.
* The Environmental Assessment will define areas, by defining areas on maps, of onsite and offsite vegetation offsets to adequately compensate for the 11ha of vegetation that will be cleared as part of the expansion.
Detailed information on the environmental impacts and impacts on surrounding residences will be available when the Environmental Assessment is publicly exhibited.
At this time all concerned members of the community are able to make a submission outlining their concerns so that the Minister for Planning (Frank Sartor) is able to consider the views of the community in deciding whether to grant approval to the extension.
The Environmental Assessment will be available on the Department of Planning website http://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/as p/register2006.asp#cw in the next couple of months.
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