More Antipodean Idiocy: NSW Must Decide Whether To Grant Coal Lease In Heart Of Wine Region
The Broken Back Range has always loomed large in Sally Scarborough’s life. She grew up in Cessnock in its foothills, amid wine country and the Great Dividing Range of the New South Wales Hunter Valley. But beyond the state forest lay rural farmland – and coalmines. Now the national sales and marketing manager at Scarborough Wine Co, just north of Pokolbin, she fears her small oasis in the Lower Hunter is under threat from the further expansion of mining.
The Chinese-owned coal producer Yancoal has lodged an assessment lease for sites between Pokolbin and Broke-Fordwich, in the heart of wine country. It’s now before the NSW government. Scarborough and a string of local wine producers and tourism operators see it as a call for action. They are fighting back against industrial development in the region, and are lobbying the NSW government to pass legislation to form a protective ring around the area – as has been done for the wine-producing Barossa Valley in South Australia and Margaret River in Western Australia.
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A report by the Australia Institute found coalmines in the Upper Hunter were running at 62% of their approved capacity last year, producing nearly 100m tonnes less than they were granted by the NSW government. Institute research director Rod Campbell has said there is “absolutely no need” for any new coalmines in the Hunter. “Existing approvals can easily meet existing and likely future demand,” he says.
“The NSW government’s own data shows that Hunter coal sales peaked in 2014. The world has been telling us for years … it intends to use less coal in the future, but NSW governments haven’t been listening.” A spokesperson for the department of regional NSW said two exploration licences for coal in the Cessnock region were originally granted in 2003 and 2010.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/20/inconceivable-hunter-coal-plan-may-spell-disaster-for-prime-wine-country