The Upper Hunter Mining Dialogue has postponed its Community Forum to 2022 due to ongoing Covid-19 restrictions.

The Community Forum is a valuable event in the Dialogue calendar as it brings together Dialogue partners – from mining, government and community – to network and identify any issues that need to be addressed collaboratively.

The 2021 forum event was scheduled for November 23. A 2022 date for the Community Forum will be announced once confirmed by the Dialogue’s Working Group and Steering Committee members.

The Dialogue is pursuing other avenues to obtain feedback from the community and its government and industry partners through a Community Perceptions Survey to be conducted by phone and online over the next few months.

Community members who want to be involved in the survey can express their interest by email at info@miningdialogue.com.au

Meanwhile, the Dialogue continues to work on its projects including finalising data for the annual updates for the Rehabilitation Principles and Commitments and Water Accounting Framework projects and the addition of 2020 data to the Air Quality Data Analysis Project.

The rehabilitation project measures the amount of mined land that has been rehabilitated in the past year compared to land disturbed by mining over the same period while the water accounting project records the volume of Hunter River water used annually by mining and other users.

The air quality project compares air quality trends in the Upper Hunter against other regions in NSW.