PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The New South Wales government on Tuesday released a proposed amendment to the Mining State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP), which Planning Minister Rob Stokes said would remove a provision making the significance of the resource the principal consideration when determining mining projects.

A 2013 clause of the Mining SEPP required the consent authority to consider the relative significance of the resource, and the economic benefits of developing the resource to both the state and the region in which the proposed project would be developed.

The clause also provided that the significance of the resource was to be the consent authority’s principal consideration in awarding a development right.

Stokes said the draft amendment reflected the legislative requirement for decision-makers to consider the likely environmental, social and economic impacts of a mining development.

“The protection of the environment and the promotion of the social and economic welfare of the community have always been objects of planning legislation,” Stokes said.

“The careful deliberation of environmental, economic and social issues is fundamental to good planning. This proposed amendment reflects the importance of balance in assessing the likely impacts of mining developments.”

The draft policy has now been opened to the public for comment, with submissions to be made no later than July 21.

The New South Wales Minerals Council has warned that the proposed legislative changes could cost jobs and hurt regional mining communities, as it removed economic considerations from the assessment of important mining projects.

“This is a retrograde step that will hurt New South Wales. It will put at risk thousands of current and potential jobs, particularly in regional mining communities where unemployment is often well above the state average,” New South Wales Minerals Council CEO Stephen Galilee said.

“Getting the balance right is important, but you can't have viable communities and a clean environment without a strong economy."

Galilee called on the Planning Minister to ensure that any changes to the SEPP would not be retrospective and would not impact on projects close to completing the assessment process. 

One such project was mining giant Rio Tinto’s Mt Thorley Warkworth expansion, which was cleared by the New South Wales Planning Assessment Commission in March.

Rio split the approval application into two separate developments, after a Court of Appeal refused an appeal against the Land and Environment Court’s decision to overturn a 2012 development consent for the project.

Under the new expansion plan, the Warkworth continuation project would involve an extension of the mining time period and footprint of the existing Warkworth opencut mine, involving the extraction of an additional 230-million tonnes of run-of-mine (RoM) coal, over a 21-year period, at a rate of 18-million tonnes of coal a year.

The Mt Thorley continuation project would involve the continuation of the existing opencut mining operations at a rate of up to ten-million tonnes a year RoM coal, with extraction expected to continue until 2022.

Rio Tinto Coal MD Chris Salisbury said on Tuesday that despite the proposed legislative changes, there was a clear and compelling case to allow mining to continue at Mt Thorley Warkworth.

“An approval will allow this mine to continue providing jobs for 1 300 people and spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year with other businesses across New South Wales.”

The project was expected to deliver some A$1.5-billion to the state’s economy in the form of wages, royalties and taxes over the coming decades, if mining was allowed to proceed.

“Clearly, these significant economic considerations should be balanced against social and environmental factors, and our proposals meet all of the relevant New South Wales government planning policies and requirements.”