Destroying the environment and breaking the law

Whitehaven Coal are serial offenders who have broken the law and breached their environmental conditions over 100 times repeatedly broken the law, with devastating consequences for water, the environment, Aboriginal cultural heritage and local communities. FOI documents have revealed that Whitehaven Coal’s rap sheet is so long that not even Whitehaven Coal knows how many crimes it has committed.

Whitehaven’s 4 existing open cut coal mines mines in the Namoi Valley in Northwestern NSW have cleared hundreds of hectares of the beloved and environmentally significant Leard State Forest, and had significant impacts on the local farming community with mine buy-outs, intolerable noise and dust pollution, and loss of stream flow in local creeks.

Local farmers, Traditional Owners, and conservationists have fought for over a decade to protect the cultural and environmental values of Leard Forest and the fertile lands and important water sources of the Namoi Valley, and to expose Whitehaven's illegal operations in the region.

Whitehaven Coal have been found guilty or investigated 35 times and incurred almost $1.5 million in total penalties for offences that have included stealing 1 billion litres of water without a licence during the worst drought on record at the Maules Creek Coal mine, polluting waterways, damaging Aboriginal heritage sites and illegally clearing hundreds of hectares of endangered forest. Whitehaven Coal are also facing criminal charges for an allegedly negligent mine blast that injured workers at a neighbouring coal mine.
Whitehaven Coal are also one of the biggest threats to the koala, which has recently been listed as endangered. Whitehaven Coal’s Narrabri Underground coal mine expansion will destroy almost 500 hectares of koala habitat. Whitehaven Coal have also purchased the tenements for the proposed Blackwater South Coal Mine, which could clear almost 7000 hectares of koala habitat, pushing this iconic animal closer to extinction.

Lock The Gate’s Whitehaven Coal Shame File reveals the full extent of Whitehaven’s destructive and often illegal behaviour from 2012, which covers almost every conceivable type of environmental harm.

Whitehaven Coal’s criminal behaviour and rampant destruction will massively increase if their new coal projects are allowed to proceed.

A decade of incidents, fines and breaches of the law by Whitehaven coal

For incidents from 2012 - 2020 see Lock The Gate's shame file here.