Sydney’s drinking-water catchment is vital to the city and the state.
To protect it, the NSW Government established a panel of independent scientific experts (the Independent Expert Panel for Mining in the Catchment) and commissioned a review of mining’s effects, focusing on risks to the quantity of water available.
How we manage mining in the catchment
We have adopted all 50 recommendations in Part 1 and Part 2 of the panel’s independent review. We have established an inter-agency taskforce to put an action plan in place to carry out these recommendations.
These actions will improve our assessment and monitoring of underground coal mining. They will also provide certainty for Sydney’s water supply and thousands of jobs across NSW, including around 5,000 workers in the Illawarra.