Gallery for mine host

THESE photographs show the type of equipment and mining technique that Centennial Coal would use in its planned Olstan auger mine in western Lake Macquarie.Centennial used them in a document to show the community what its planned Olstan mine would look like.The photographs are of Centennial's former Fassifern auger mine.The Olstan plan has attracted controversy because residents believe it breaches a NSW Government ban on open-cut mining.Centennial insists it will be an underground operation.No Open Cut Mine for Awaba spokesman Craig Williams said Centennial managing director Bob Cameron was on record in 2004 and 2005 as describing the Fassifern operation as an open-cut and auger mine."It is quite clear that the Fassifern mine was an open-cut and that Olstan would be the same," Mr Williams said.Centennial external affairs manager Katie Brassil said it was unfair to compare the Fassifern project to the Olstan project, despite the company doing so with the photographs."If Centennial could mine the Olstan resource in the same way as the Fassifern auger mine, we would recover about four times the amount of coal," Ms Brassil said.Before the 2007 state ban on open-cut mining in Lake Macquarie, Centennial could have recovered about 4 million tonnes of coal from Olstan over four to five years, she said.The Olstan plan had been designed to comply with the ban."As a result, the proposed Olstan project will only recover up to 1.3 million tonnes over three years," Ms Brassil said."Open-cut mining would recover about 90 per cent of the coal available at Olstan while auger mining only recovers 20 to 25 per cent."A Department of Planning spokeswoman said last week the department was investigating whether the Olstan plan met the definition of underground mining in its state planning policy for mining.