The Blue Mountains Conservation Society has expressed anger over cracked pagodas in the Mugii Murum-ban State Conservation Area in the Capertee Valley, near Lithgow, that they say has been caused by Centennial Coal's Airly Mine.
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The conservation area lies 35 kilometres north of Lithgow and is a small but spectacular part of the Gardens of Stone area, a protected national park.
"Conservationists predicted this would happen as mining intensity at the Airly Mine was too great," Society vice president, Madi Maclean, said.
"Several sinkholes have opened up with the surface of the reserve having subsided up to 700mm, more than five times the approved limit of 125mm."
Centennial Coal confirmed that there had been an issue with "exceedance" at the mine and that they had notified the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE). They would now rely on independent geotechnical engineering expert assessments.
Responding to queries by the Gazette, a spokesman said they had "undertaken a review of Airly's mine design and installed a 60-metre wide maingate pillar to prevent future subsidence incidents".
He added, "moving forward, Airly mine designs will be based on assessments undertaken by SCT Operations, an independent specialist geotechnology consultancy".
The Society is pushing for Centennial to be prosecuted and fined by the NSW government for breach of development consent.
Ms Maclean said "the Society understands mining intensity was more than 70 per cent coal extraction when the cracking damage occurred and has written to Planning Minister Anthony Roberts, asking he uphold the provisions of development consent and ensure coal extraction is limited to the current level of 46 per cent".
The Centennial spokesman said Centennial became aware of an exceedance at its Airly Mine in January and notified all stakeholders, including NPWS and DPIE. He said "Centennial's Airly Community Consultative Committee has been briefed and updated throughout. Management and remediation work will continue to be undertaken in consultation with the NPWS and DPIE."
A DPIE spokesperson said their compliance officers "are investigating this serious matter but we've already required Centennial Airly to complete an independent risk and environmental assessment of the remediation options available for subsidence cracking, in consultation with NPWS and NSW Resources Regulator".
"Details of any action the mine is required to take as a result ... will be made publicly available."
