Friends of the Upper Hunter

About

Friends of the Upper Hunter is a newly-formed group of Upper Hunter parents, grandparents, farmers, business people, residents and landowners who want a healthy, prosperous and sustainable future for this region, our children and grandchildren. Many of our families have been in the Hunter for up to six generations. Others have chosen this area for its natural beauty, friendly communities, strong agricultural industries and easy proximity to Newcastle and Sydney. We’re pro-farming, pro-local business and pro-communities. We acknowledge the economic contribution of mining but we’re taking action because we believe our region has already reached capacity in terms of the number of coal mines that it can safely support. We don’t believe we can take additional air quality impacts without damaging the health of residents – including the 4700 children who attend school in Muswellbrook, Aberdeen and Scone every day. We don’t believe we can take additional drains on our precious water supplies or sacrifice more farmland without jeopardising our region’s agricultural, wine and thoroughbred industries. We believe we have exciting opportunities to build and strengthen other local industries such as farming and food production, wine making, tourism, and thoroughbred breeding, and that through this we can create a strong economic future with secure, satisfying employment for all of our residents. We can only realise these opportunities if we have balance. That means sensible protections for our communities, our farmland and our other industries. For all these reasons, we oppose proposals such as the Dartbrook Underground Modification and the Dartbrook Opencut which we believe pose unacceptable risks to the health of residents, the quality of our local environment and the viability of other industries.