ONGOING rehabilitation work is giving the Wilkie Creek coal mine near Dalby a new lease on life as the site moves beyond mining.
A 10 person team is methodically reshaping and stabilising disturbed areas, as well as monitoring and managing groundwater flows to prepare the rehabilitated land for cattle.
Peabody Australia president George J Schuller jun said Peabody understood that mining played an important, but temporary role in the life of a region.
Mr Schuller said Peabody’s mine closure approach involved working closely with local landholders and property managers to ensure the site continued to be productive post-mining.
“We take our commitment as responsible custodians of the land and good neighbours seriously and our progressive rehabilitation approach means we started rehabilitating the land well before the closure of Wilkie Creek in 2013,” Mr Schuller said.
“We have been conducting cattle grazing trials for more than two years now and our results have shown that the cattle grazed on our rehabilitated farming land have grown on par with those cattle grazed on native pastures.”
Mr Schuller said local jobs are just one of the benefits of the rehabilitation phase with Wilkie Creek still contributing around $6.05 million a year in direct supplier spend to the Queensland economy, with about $2.7m spent with local suppliers.
“We’re still doing a lot of work on site and we try to use local suppliers first,” Mr Schuller said.
“As a business, you have to support the community that supports you.”
Peabody has progressed rehabilitation of its Wilkie Creek site following the completion of coal mining in 2013 with over 60 per cent of rehabilitation now complete.
This includes backfilling of open cut voids, re-shaping of dumps and undergoing demolition and associated works. Included within the final landform planning process are paddocks and cattle watering systems to support the end land use of grazing and hay bailing.
Extensive community engagement continues to inform the planning for post-mine land use with grazing trials, including more than 50 cattle on a rehabilitated backfilled pit, delivering positive results for neighbouring graziers.
