Hunter Valley collieries to be greened-up as clean industrial hubs in “post mining land transformation”

The federal and New South Wales (NSW) governments are hoping to turn two closing coal mines into eco- and industrial hubs, releasing two pilots today along with master plans for the Hunter Valley region.

The federal government has put $5 million into what it’s calling “the first major post-mining land transformations plans” in the Hunter Valley, as the 2030 closure of BHP’s Mt Arthur coal mine near Muswellbrook approaches.

Glencore has already shuttered its underground West Wallsend colliery at the Macquarie Coal Complex. 

“What’s happening here is us and NSW … making sure that we’re using a portion of that land for new factories, for new industrial use, to drive new investment in re-industrialising and diversifying the Hunter Valley economy,” federal industry minister Tim Ayres told the ABC on Tuesday.

“Plans will be released today for the community, but also for the investment community.”

The draft master plans promise industries that will provide up to 7,000 jobs, and map how the Hunter’s current workforce combined with rail, road, power and water infrastructure could be a foundation for future industries, such as renewable energy, advanced manufacturing and warehousing. 

Two areas covering 950 hectares next to the Mt Arthur open cut mine have been proposed for rezoning as industrial hubs, while the mine itself is proposed to become a part eco-corridor, and part agricultural land. 

The Teralba/West Wallsend part of the bigger Macquarie complex, south-west of Newcastle, is being pitched as a precinct for the same kinds of industries.

The plans set aside 500 hectares for “developable land” and 36 hectares of new open space.

The master plans are open for public consultation now and are expected to be finalised by the end of the year, and are the precursors to other work being done by councils and governments at other coal sites, including Eraring, Liddell and Bayswater.

NSW planning minister Paul Scully says the plans don’t remove the coal companies’ rehabilitation responsibilities, but do change what those may look like.

“We’re saying we can do better than that. We can still maintain rehabilitation requirements, and this is not about letting anyone off that requirement,” he said.

“But we’re saying that there’s a lot of great assets, as you can see behind us, that could be repurposed for future jobs growth,” he said during a press conference today.

“Whether that’s in in manufacturing, whether that’s in renewable energy production, in data centres, in renewable energy generation itself. 

“We think this is a really good and sensible way of maintaining and attracting investment into the Hunter for the long term.

“Here at Mt Arthur, we’ll look at doing two stages, doing the preparation while the mine continues to operate to make sure that it’s as seamless as possible a transfer of one job, a set of jobs, into another.

“At West Wallsend at the Macquarie Coal Complex, a similar process where we’ve got the opportunity to rezone areas for industrial use into the future, making sure there is a jobs future in that region.

“This is going to provide us a whole heap of detail about what we can do on other sites into the future, and already there’s discussions between AGL, Origin, Bays[water], Liddell, and Eraring for their future, planning their future while they continue to operate.”

The NSW government is pushing hard to reindustrialise coal centres and shore up jobs in those areas, as collieries close.

Last week it announced an investment of $12 billion into bringing back passenger train manufacturing to the Hunter Valley, and Greensteel Australia last week also said it would restart steelmaking in Newcastle.