Charbon Coal found criminally negligent and ordered to pay $175,000 plus costs
The Defendant, pleaded guilty to the offence of ‘building a haul road in a location other than the approved route’ and not complying with the EPA Act.
NSW Land and Environment Court’s, Justice Nicola Pain fined Charbon Coal Pty Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Centennial Coal, for breaching an EPA approval condition by positioning the haul road in an unapproved location.
By moving the road route, the defendant disturbed an Aboriginal cultural heritage site that the company knew was in the vicinity and cleared endangered vegetation.
The judge noted the offence was due solely to a systemic failure to check and monitor Big Rim’s compliance with the environmental assessment, and the defendant had full knowledge of the planned construction of the road in a location that was not in accordance with the conditions of approval.
The defendant "should have been well aware of the need to comply with the conditions of approval", the judge said, and the decision to build the road in a different location to avoid a steeper gradient warranted a finding of negligence.
By moving the route, the company disturbed a heritage site, with consequences that were culturally considerable because it made the location inaccessible, according to an expert witness called by the Department of Planning and Environment.
The action also caused avoidable environmental damage.
The company cleared 2.04 hectares of vegetation in building the haul road, including 0.59 hectares of threatened box gum rather than the approved 1.21 hectares which did not include any box gum woodland.
The mine has since closed, but Justice Pain rejected the company's arguments that its rehabilitation efforts constituted evidence of good corporate character.
"The rehabilitation of the mine site was a condition of the project approval," she said.
The company had also received a penalty notice in March for a breach of approval, the judge noted.
“Although it does not weigh heavily on my consideration of the relevant matters, the issuance of the penalty notice as recently as March 2016 for a breach of a condition of approval indicates that the Defendant has not at all times observed the conditions of approval outside the circumstances of the present offence.”
Justice Pain added that the penalty should serve as a general deterrent, including to Centennial Coal, which operates other mines.
The Court considered the appropriate penalty for this offense as $250,000, which Justice Pain discounted by 30% to $175,000, in light of the early guilty plea and other mitigating factors. The company has also agreed to pay the prosecutor's costs of $55,000.
Full court document here.
