Minnamurra Aerial, Kiama (AE015R)small.j

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Destruction of ancient and rare forest

The approved mine sites include rare and biodiverse vegetation types, as well as vulnerable bird habitats, but the NSW Government’s Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE) says 7.5 hectares (ha) of this native vegetation will have to be completely cut and cleared to make way for the largest mine pit.

Of the 7.5ha to be destroyed, 4.5ha is Bangalay Sand Forest, of 100 to 400- year-old trees, currently protected as an Endangered Ecological Community (EEC) under the NSW Government’s own Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016.

The Bangalay Sand Forest to be destroyed is protected because it is a significant remnant of the very much larger Bangalay Sand Forests of the Sydney Basin and South East Corner bioregion until up to 60 per cent of their area was lost to urban and industrial development since European settlement.

The NSW Government is ignoring the advice of its own Threatened Species Scientific Committee by approving the destruction of the diminishing Forest.

This clearing of native vegetation is listed as a Key Threatening Process under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act (1995) and the government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee says Bangalay Sand Forests are “likely to become extinct in nature in New South Wales unless the circumstances and factors threatening their survival (ie. clearing, for example) cease to operate.” Despite this, the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment has still approved the clearing of the ancient and irreplaceable Bangalay Sand Forest to enable the mine in the Minnamurra River catchment to proceed.

The 100 to 400-year-old trees in the Bangalay forest to be bulldozed will be replaced with a sand mine having an operational life of only three to four years.

All Boral Australia has to do to get the NSW Government’s final permission to bulldoze the protected ancient forest and vulnerable bird habitats is to pay money or “ecosystem credits” into a government “biodiversity” Trust Fund, a system which a NSW Conservation Council study says “pushes more endangered species to the brink”.

Additionally, no amount of money from any Trust Fund can recreate the biodiversity of 100 to 400-year-old Bangalay Sand Forest for the vulnerable animals and birds dependent on it.

More losses and threats

In addition to the destruction of the protected 4.5ha of Bangalay Sand Forest, other protected vegetation adjacent to and nearby the new mine sites are under threat. These protected ecosystems include:

The Critically Endangered SE Littoral Rainforest, protected under NSW legislation and listed under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act).

Another Endangered Ecological Community, Coastal Saltmarsh, protected in NSW and listed as vulnerable under the EPBC Act and for which the NSW government has developed a “Save Our Species” recovery program to try to reverse the continuing loss of this high value EEC.

An additional 3.0 ha of high value native vegetation, unique to the Minnamurra River catchment area.

DPIE says that six fauna species listed as threatened under the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act have also been recorded in the mining site to be cut and cleared: the Dusky Woodswallow, Varied Sittella, Southern Myotis, Eastern Bentwing-bat, Eastern Freetail-bat and the Grey-headed Flying Fox.

Major flood events may carry pollutants and sediments the short distance downstream from the mines to the high value and sensitive seagrass beds and fish habitat of the Minnamurra River itself.

The destruction of the Bangalay Sand Forest will take with it scores of breeding hollows on which the Barking owl, the Masked owl and the Southern myotis bat, all with a ‘vulnerable’ conservation status, are dependent for their nesting and breeding. (By allowing this habitat destruction, the NSW government would also be working directly against its own Save Our Species recovery programs it has in place for the two owls and the bat.)

The lengthy landscape-disfiguring six-metre-high bunds or earthen walls to be built around the mine sites may not stop floodwaters carrying pollutants, sediment and possibly acids from acid sulfate soils washing into the Minnamurra River and may increase floodwater velocities and worsen flooding impacts on local government and privately owned property.

Aboriginal cultural heritage

Archaeological testing of the proposed mine sites’ area has revealed more than 1,100 Aboriginal stone tools and other cultural artefacts. All but one of the archaeological test pits produced a large number of artefacts. However, given that the digs did not cover the entire area to be mined and that this is a riverine site which has proven very attractive to human occupation over many millennia, there is little doubt there are many thousands of prehistoric artefacts and a wealth of ancient human cultural evidence in the area to be mined.

If the mines proceed, many if not most of this irreplaceable heritage will be lost.

Government’s defective process and assessment

By mere administrative decision of the NSW Department of Planning alone, using a rare remnant legislative technicality, the assessment of the environmental and other impacts of the proposed two new sand mines and the process for refusing or approving Boral’s new mining application, was conducted under old legislation, the former Section 75W of the NSW Environmental Protection and Assessment Act, which cut out from 1 March 2018.

If DPIE had not allowed this administrative technicality, Boral’s application would have had to be environmentally assessed under the NSW government’s new Coastal Management State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP) of 13 April 2018, as a separate, new project, not as an extension or modification of Boral’s existing mining approvals.

All advice available to FOMR is that Boral’s application for the two new sand mines would have been refused if it had been assessed under the Coastal Management SEPP as a new project and not as a proposed modification of Boral’s existing mining operations which are outside and distant from the new sites in the Minnamurra River catchment. It is entirely possible that there is no need for the development of new sand mine pits in the first place.

Boral already owns four large mine sites on the western side of the Princes Highway, well away from the Minnamurra River catchment east of the highway. At least one of these large areas – Stage 4 - remains to be mined and another has been only partially mined. Additionally, Boral is in the advanced stages of determining the extent of a new sand mine site about 60km south, at Nowra, NSW.

Publicly available NSW government information and informed advice available to FOMR shows that there are scores more bird and animal species dependent variously for habitat and breeding on the Endangered Ecological Community of Bangalay Sand Forest that will be cut and cleared to make way for Boral’s new sand mines but that DPIE’s environmental assessment of the Boral mining application does not list them, except for two owls and one bat species.

These multiple omissions of fauna from DPIE’s official environmental assessment are probably explainable by the fact that their inclusion in the assessment would have very substantially increased the amount, in the form of money or ‘ecosystem credits’, that Boral would have to pay into the NSW government biodiversity offsets Trust Fund in compensation for the destruction of the Bangalay Sand Forest and associated wildlife habitats. The resulting payments may well have made the cost of the new mines too high for Boral.

Evidence available to FOMR indicates that the two Independent Planning Commission (IPC) members probably based their decision to allow the destruction of the State-protected Bangalay Sand Forest (BSF) on incomplete information about the BSF ecosystem’s habitat values.

In its decision-making, the IPC was made aware of the number of Bangalay trees in the forest ecosystem but not of the very substantial high value, integral wildlife habitat hollows they provide for various flora and fauna.

The IPC was also not informed of the number or names of all the birds and animals inhabiting the Forest or of the importance of the dead Bangalays in the ecosystem and the equally important animal and bird habitats they provide.