"The Hume mining project is designed to protect Sydney water supplies and is not within a SydneyWater 'Special Area'," according to Hume project director Mr Greig Duncan.
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Mr Duncan made this comment upon the release of the first in a series of Technical Briefing Notes on key issues for the project, outlined in the company's response to the interim report of the Independent Planning Commission, recently sent to the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment.
The first technical briefing note deals the Hume Coal project not being within the Sydney Water Catchment 'Special Areas'.
These areas, that are off-limits to the public, comprise 23 percent of the much wider Sydney Water Catchment, covering some 16,000 sq kms - an area from Lithgow nearly to Cooma.
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Mr Duncan said that although other mining occured in 'Special Areas', the Hume project was well outside the main protected catchments surrounding the most important dams.
"It needs to be appreciated that towns, cities, mines, quarries and numerous other industries exist within the wider Sydney water catchment and are regulated to ensure volume and quality of water entering storages is not compromised," he said.
Mr Duncan said the Hume project would have a negligible or imperceptible change to the volume of water entering Sydney water storages and, as the project was downstream of the Wingecarribee Reservoir, "there is no impact on local water supply."
"Surface water quality from the impacts of the project will meet the requirements of the Sydney Drinking Water SEPP, in the same way other developments within the Sydney Water Catchment are regulated," he said.
"The mine's above ground infrastructure is located within the Medway Rivulet catchment, feeding Medway Dam, that has not been used as a water supply since 2013, due to algae toxicity," he said.
Mr Duncan said that Hume Coal held enough water licences to account for any of the negligible take of surface water due to the project.
