A clean up day had been organised by Alex Allchin, from the Colong Foundation, for the Wollangambe River. I have mentioned earlier about the massive spill of coal fines from a containment dam at the Clarence Colliery into the Wollangambe River and of a visit I was on to the river. The mine owners, Centennial Coal, had been ordered by the EPA to clean up the river, but this was very slow to start. This meant that the coal fines were washed a long way down the Wollangambe River.
A recent visit to the river seemed to show that the clean up work was progressing very slowly and was far from satisfactory. This was despite this press release from the EPA (2 December 2015) saying that 163 tonnes of coal fines so far had been removed from the river.
So the purpose of the day was to express our concerns about the clean up and to do some clean up work ourselves.
On the day, over 40 bushwalkers and conservationists turned up at Clarence and then headed to near Bell and walked out along a ridge to the Wollangambe River. This was to a point about 5 km below where the spill entered. All of this section of the river is within Blue Mountains National Park and in the World Heritage Area.
Here the river flows through a deep gorge – it is a canyon in places. We climbed down to the river in two places and first investigated the state of the river. This is one section that has been cleaned up by the contractors working for Centennial Coal. But it also looks like there work is ongoing and not finished.
The state of the water is very poor. The river water looks black. This is probably due to the mine discharge that is allowed under their license rather than from the coal fine spill. But is under the water that the coal fines are found. They sit on the bottom and side of the riverbed. They settle on rocks and sand and create a nasty black sludge. In our clean up area – a lot of this sludge had been removed but a lot still was still present. What was left was quite difficult to extract from the river. It was hard to scoop it out with getting a lot of sand. The easiest places where in corners where it had built up.
I think we all found it a difficult job – both for us and it would also be for the contractors.
We removed quite a few bucket and bag loads of the coal fine sludge and carried them out. But the river remains in a terrible state. This is a real tragedy!
The Colong Foundation have a press release about the day here. I have more photos online here.
Update 11 December 2015
A few more links – A news report (video) from Prime 7 and a ABC news report
Attn Keith Muir or to whom it may concern.
Re concerns over toxic pollution in the Wollangamble river.
Down in Berrima on the Wingecarribee river we “Battle for Berrima” see website , are also extremely concerned about river pollution in the whole of Sydney water catchment and Hawkesbury aquifer.
Therefore we are gathering signatures for a petittion to be presented to the Legislative council to Stop futher coal mining in the water catchment and call for a survey of the catchment to stop further river and drinking water pollution for locals and Sydney residents, as we also have heavy metals pouring into our river from the Boral mine as highlighted by Dr Ian Wrights study..120 x the base recommended levels.
We can send to you a signature form for signature collection, if your group are prepared to assist in this goal.
Look forward to hearing from you
Christopher Mallet