Michelle Slater
The last piece of Hazelwood mining history was blown to bits this morning when dredger 9 was successfully demolished in a controlled explosive collapse.
A morning of fine rain had helped to dampen the ground, but the clouds lifted briefly for when the detonators went off at 11am sharp.
ENGIE stakeholder engagement manager Ian Needham said the dredger collapse went “as expected”.
“Today is a significant process in the Hazelwood demolition program as dredger 9 is the last dredger in the mine, so in this sense it’s a milestone for the project,” Mr Needham said.
“We understand this is a significant moment for some members of the community. We are not treating this anything like a celebration, this is about clearing the site for potential future use.”
The 1540-tonne and 36-metre high rope suspended bucket wheel dredger was in service for about half a century digging coal out of the Morwell open cut mine.
Its collapse followed the explosive demolition of dredgers 10 and 11 which took place last year. Smaller dredgers 24 and 25 were mechanically pulled apart.
All the dredgers are being recycled for scrap metal.
Mr Needham said ENGIE had previously explored selling the large mining equipment to preserve them for the community.
“But the reality was to actually remove them, take them apart and put them somewhere else wasn’t viable, there was no one interest in that,” he said.
“It’s a question of where would you put such a large machine? There’s a dredger out the front of Power Works already.”
Mr Needham said a team of explosives experts from the United Kingdom and United Stated had spent months planning for this morning’s collapse.
He said demolition contractors had put a bed of sand behind the dredger to soften the fall and an easterly wind had helped to disperse the noise.
“There will always be some remnants of coal dust in these machines, we have people on site ready to go in case of any hotspots,” he said.
“We have to remember these are quite big machines, they’ve been digging coal for the past 50 or 60 years. There will always be coal dust around, but we are aware of this sort of thing.”
