Battle pits coal against NSW farmer

Lawyers for Chinese-owned miner Yancoal are fighting a court decision that hangs the future of a project in the NSW Hunter Valley on the consent of an 80-year-old landowner.

The NSW Supreme Court on Friday heard that sixth-generation farmer Wendy Bowman's 182-hectare property Rosedale - "property 129" - sits directly above a significant deposit of coal, and that her land is also at the centre of remediation works promised by the operators of Yancoal's planned Ashton open-cut coal mine.

NSW Land and Environment Court judge Nicola Pain last year imposed a condition that the project could not proceed unless Ashton Coal Operations first secured control of Rosedale.

"If the owner chooses not to sell, lease or licence property 129 to Ashton, the project as I have assessed and approved, it cannot proceed," Justice Pain wrote in December.

Ashton's lawyers have appealed the condition, noting on Friday that Mrs Bowman was "steadfastly opposed" to selling up.

The Hunter Environment Lobby, which brought the case in the Land and Environment Court, has argued that Justice Pain was right to impose the condition because Mrs Bowman's land is critical to the promised economic benefits of the coal project, and to Ashton's commitments to mitigate the mine's environmental impacts.

They say the condition is the best way of providing certainty that Ashton would not begin its mining work and later be forced to renege on remediation obligations because of a failure to secure property 129.

Judge Fabian Gleeson, who is one of three judges hearing the appeal, has dubbed it "the hidden dragon submission".

The judges have reserved their decision.