The coal industry in the Lithgow region on the western edge of the Greater Blue Mountain has been poorly controlled and extremely damaging.
Over the last ten year, 4nature has played an active role in scrutinising and holding to account the area’s mines and power station, responsible not just for greenhouse emissions, but destroying cliffs and pagodas, destroying endangered swamps, polluting Sydney’s drinking water and likely to leave a toxic legacy long after the coal runs out.
Regulatory failures
In 2017, 4nature successful took legal action that stopped the Springvale Coal mine from polluting Sydney’s drinking water, only to have this decision overturned by the NSW Liberal-National government. They brought in special legislation that allowed the mine to stay open and stripped away the strict water quality rules applying to all other developments.
Even though the drinking water rules were weakened, a plan was put in place to address the pollution. The government required the mine to treat its toxic mine water using a reverse osmosis treatment plant before being used to cool Mt Piper Power Station. This treated water would replace the use of Coxs Rivers water in the power station. The treatment plant commenced operating in 2019.
White-anted pollution controls
What seemed like a win for the environment was progressively white-anted over subsequent years by weak regulators.
Detailed analysis by 4nature in 2025 found that up to 20 million litres a day of partially treated water has been regularly dumped into the tiny Thompsons Creek in the upper Coxs River since January 2022. The polluted water has been discharged without an EPA pollution licence. Coxs River water was being used by Energy Australia for the power plant, contrary to its water licence that required preferential use of mine water.
And alarmingly, the extremely salty brine generated by the treatment plant was being mixed with flyash from the power plant and placed in a huge ash dump. The dump was uncovered, unlined and sitting the water table. It was unsurprising to see the salts and dissolved metals leach out into the adjacent Wangcol Creek after rain. Local monitoring, confirmed by Energy Australia monitoring figures, showed toxins entering this Coxs River stream and into Sydney’s drinking water.
The approval of the original ‘zero-discharge’ water treatment system is now a sick joke.
4nature complained to key regulators: the NSW Natural Resources Access Regulator, the EPA and the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure. While each of them conceded that the system was not operating as intended, they were unable or unwilling to enforce the rules.
Regulators begin to act
All this began to change in January this year.
Late that month, the EPA responded to 2025 reports of huge spikes in pollutants in Wangcol Creek by Gardens of Stone Alliance members, Lithgow Environment Group. The EPA issued Energy Australia a Clean Up Notice that required them to stop highly toxic discharges over the next 3 months.
Stalled rehabilitation
Also in January, 4nature moved to enforce rehabilitation obligations on a closed mine in the same region. At the start of the month, 4nature lodged a case in the NSW Land and Environment, objecting to an approval that sidesteps rehabilitation of the Angus Place mine, operated by Centennial Coal.
4nature, supported by public interest law practice Environmental Defenders Office, claims that the modification to the approval of the Angus Place underground coal mine is invalid.
The approval for the mine expired in August 2024, when rehabilitation was meant to have been completed. Instead, mine owner Centennial Coal sought an indefinite extension to its rehabilitation requirements to allow for the underground infrastructure to be used for a new mine – Angus Place West. The Independent Planning Commission granted permission for Angus Place to stay open in October 2025, long after its approval had lapsed.
Angus Place mine has remained closed for more than 10 years ago after its expansion plans were halted with the closure of the nearby Wallerawang Power Station and calls to stop the mine from draining and destroying endangered swamps and cracking rock formations now in the Gardens of Stone State Conservation Area.
4nature is seeking rehabilitation to be completed within 12 months.
It not just about rehabilitation
Centennial Coal has been pumping up to 13 million litres of polluted Angus Place mine water a day to Mt Piper Power Station, where much of it has been used. Due to high volumes of polluted water also being pumped from the nearby Springvale coal mine, excess water not used by the power station is released in the Coxs River, polluting Sydney’s drinking water.
Rehabilitation and sealing the Angus Place mine will not only restore the surface impacts form the mine infrastructure, it will reduce the amount of polluted water released into Sydney’s drinking water catchment. We are also hoping that it will stop the highly destructive proposal for the Angus Place West mine from eve going ahead.
The first court directions hearing will take place on 13 March 2026.