The Hidden Dangers of Mine Decommissioning: Austar Coal Mine

The Incident at Austar

On 17 September 2024, a contract worker was killed at Austar Coal Mine No. 2 shaft in New South Wales. The worker fell approximately 400 metres while attaching steel plates to shaft cover beams as part of decommissioning activities. No fall prevention or fall arrest equipment was in use at the time of the incident.

The basic facts are stark. A worker was performing a task at the top of a 400-metre shaft without any form of fall protection. The task involved working directly above an open shaft, attaching steel plates to cover beams. The fall was fatal.

Austar Coal Mine is located in the Hunter Valley. It ceased production in February 2020 and is operated by Yancoal Australia. Since ceasing production, the site has been in a decommissioning phase, with various works underway to progressively close and rehabilitate the operation.

The NSW Resources Regulator commenced an investigation under reference IIR24-09. The investigation is examining work planning and coordination, risk assessments, safety procedures, and the oversight arrangements for the contractor performing the work.

The Context of Mine Closure

When a mine ceases production, it does not suddenly become safe. The physical hazards that existed during operations, open shafts, unstable ground, contaminated water, residual gases, deteriorating infrastructure, all remain. In many cases, these hazards worsen over time as maintenance ceases and the site degrades.

Decommissioning and rehabilitation are long, complex processes. They can span years or even decades, depending on the size and type of operation. The work involved includes removing equipment, sealing shafts and adits, managing water, remediating contaminated land, reshaping landforms, and establishing vegetation. Each of these activities carries its own hazards, many of which are different from those encountered during production.

Austar’s No. 2 shaft was a significant piece of infrastructure. A 400-metre shaft is not a small opening in the ground. It is a major vertical excavation that presents an obvious and extreme fall hazard to anyone working near or above it. The task of fitting cover beams is part of the process of permanently sealing such a shaft, and by definition, it requires working in proximity to the open void.

Why Decommissioning Sites Are Treated as Lower Risk

There is a well-documented tendency in the mining industry and in broader industrial contexts to treat decommissioning and closure activities as inherently lower risk than production operations. Several factors drive this.

The workforce changes. During production, a mine will have a large, experienced workforce, many of whom have worked at the site for years and understand its specific hazards. During decommissioning, the workforce is typically smaller, more transient, and often composed primarily of contractors who may not have the same depth of site-specific knowledge.

Management attention shifts. When a mine is producing, it generates revenue, and there is strong commercial incentive to maintain production and manage the safety risks that could disrupt it. Once production ceases, the site becomes a cost centre. The commercial incentive shifts toward completing closure as quickly and cheaply as possible. Management resources and attention are redirected to producing assets.

The regulatory and organisational framework can also change. Some sites reduce their safety management infrastructure during decommissioning, on the basis that fewer people are on site and the activities are simpler. Safety staff may be redeployed. Monitoring systems may be scaled back. The frequency and rigour of inspections may decrease.

None of these reductions in oversight correspond to a reduction in hazard. A 400-metre shaft is just as dangerous during decommissioning as it was during production. An unstable highwall does not become stable because the mine has closed. Contaminated water does not become less toxic because production has ceased.

Contractor Management During Closure

The Austar incident raises particular concerns about how contractors are managed during mine decommissioning.

Contract workers performing decommissioning tasks may have extensive experience in their trade (steel fixing, demolition, earthworks) without having specific experience in mining environments. The hazards of a mine site are not the same as those of a general construction site. Open shafts, abandoned workings, residual gases, and unstable ground are not standard hazards in most construction contexts.

The mine operator retains overall responsibility for safety on the site, including the safety of contractors. This means the operator must ensure that contractors are inducted, that risk assessments are conducted for each task, that appropriate controls are in place, and that supervision is adequate.

In the Austar case, the investigation is examining whether these obligations were met. The absence of fall prevention or arrest equipment for a task involving work directly above a 400-metre shaft suggests a fundamental failure somewhere in the chain from planning through risk assessment to execution.

Fall prevention for work at height is not an exotic or unusual control. It is basic, well-understood, and covered in detail by Australian standards and codes of practice. Harnesses, lanyards, anchor points, edge protection, and safe work platforms are standard tools. The expectation that any person working above a significant fall hazard will be protected by at least one of these measures is universal across Australian workplaces. That none were in use at Austar is difficult to reconcile with any adequate risk assessment process.

The Gap Between Planning and Execution

Many mine decommissioning projects have detailed closure plans that address environmental rehabilitation, infrastructure removal, and stakeholder engagement. Fewer have the same level of detail around the safety management of the decommissioning work itself.

Closure plans tend to focus on outcomes: what the site will look like when rehabilitation is complete, what environmental standards will be met, what monitoring will continue. The work required to reach those outcomes is often specified in less detail, particularly regarding the safety controls for specific tasks.

This creates a gap. The overall plan may identify that “Shaft No. 2 will be sealed” without specifying how the sealing will be done, what the specific hazards of that task are, what controls will be applied, or who will supervise the work. These details are left to the contractor or to task-level planning that may or may not receive adequate review by the operator.

In a production environment, high-risk tasks are typically subject to detailed safe work method statements, permit-to-work systems, and direct supervision. The question is whether the same rigour is applied to high-risk tasks during decommissioning, when there may be fewer people available to review, approve, and supervise the work.

What the Investigation Is Examining

The NSW Resources Regulator’s investigation into the Austar fatality is focused on several key areas.

Work planning and coordination. How was the task of fitting shaft cover beams planned? Who prepared the work method? Was the method reviewed and approved by the mine operator? Were the specific hazards of the task identified?

Risk assessment. Was a formal risk assessment conducted for the task? Did the risk assessment identify the fall hazard? If it did, what controls were specified? If those controls included fall prevention equipment, why was it not in use?

Safety procedures. What safety procedures were in place at the site for work at height? Were those procedures consistent with Australian standards? Were they communicated to the contractor and the specific workers involved?

Supervision and oversight. Who was responsible for supervising the contractor’s work? Was a representative of the mine operator present during the task? What inspection or audit arrangements were in place?

The investigation report, once completed, will provide detailed findings on each of these areas. The investigation reference is IIR24-09, and the findings will be published by the NSW Resources Regulator.

Broader Industry Context

The Austar fatality is not an isolated case of decommissioning hazards being underestimated. Across Australia, there are hundreds of mines in various stages of closure and rehabilitation. Many of these are legacy sites that were closed before modern environmental and safety standards applied. Others are more recent closures like Austar.

The scale of the decommissioning challenge in Australian mining is growing. As older operations reach the end of their economic life, and as community and regulatory expectations around rehabilitation increase, the volume of decommissioning work will continue to rise.

This means more workers will be exposed to the hazards of decommissioning, and more contractors will be engaged to perform the work. If the industry does not address the systemic factors that contribute to incidents like the Austar fatality, the frequency of such events will increase as the volume of work increases.

Lessons for Operators Managing Mine Closures

The Austar incident points to several areas that every operator managing a mine closure or decommissioning project should review.

Maintain safety management infrastructure. Do not scale back safety management systems, safety personnel, or oversight arrangements simply because the site has ceased production. The hazards remain, and the workforce performing decommissioning may be less familiar with them.

Apply production-standard rigour to decommissioning tasks. Every high-risk task during decommissioning should be subject to the same planning, risk assessment, permitting, and supervision that would be applied during production. If a task would require a permit to work during production, it should require one during decommissioning.

Invest in contractor induction and oversight. Contractors performing decommissioning work need site-specific induction that covers the hazards unique to the mining environment. Generic construction inductions are not sufficient. Supervision arrangements need to ensure that contractors are working to the approved methods and that any deviation is identified and corrected immediately.

Audit the gap between closure plans and task-level safety. Review the closure plan and identify every task that involves a significant hazard. For each, verify that there is a detailed safe work method statement, that the required controls are specified and available, and that supervision arrangements are adequate.

Treat decommissioning as a high-risk activity. The mindset that closure is a winding-down process, lower in risk and intensity than production, is wrong. Decommissioning involves unfamiliar tasks, changing site conditions, a transient workforce, and hazards that persist or worsen over time. It deserves the same level of management attention as any other phase of the mine lifecycle.

A worker went to a mine site to do a job and fell 400 metres to his death. No level of corporate regret or regulatory action can undo that outcome. What the industry can do is learn from it and ensure that the conditions that led to it are not repeated at the hundreds of other sites facing the same closure challenges.