As loud as a coal mine!

Let's get the EPA to listen to noise complaints...

• 12pm, Monday 20th FEBRUARY (note - original event date has been postponed.)
  
• EPA office, 117 Bull Street Newcastle
• Bring your own noise maker!

Have you ever been kept awake all night by noisy neighbours? In desperation you smother your ears with the pillow to try and find some quiet, but the constant rumble and crash from next door won't go away; it penetrates your skull and brings you to your wits end?

Imagine if that happened every night. Imagine if your new neighbour was a massive open cut coal mine operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and didn't really care who they kept awake. Dozens of bulldozers, dump trucks, drag lines, and excavators moving billions of tonnes of rock and earth just beyond your back fence, while you try to get some sleep. It's enough to send you bonkers.

This is the awful reality faced by many people in the Hunter Valley and elsewhere in NSW. They are the collateral damage of the NSW government's addiction to coal mining. They complain to the mining company, to politicians, but nobody listens. They complain to the Environment Protection Authority – the agency responsible for controlling noise pollution – but nothing happens.

In fact, the EPA is about to make things even worse: they are in the process of weakening noise pollution regulations in NSW so that coal mines will be allowed to inflict even more torment and sleepless nights on even more people.

The EPA is not listening to us. So let's make ourselves impossible to ignore. Let's make ourselves as loud as a coal mine!

At 12pm on Monday 20th FEBRUARY, mine noise affected residents of the Hunter will hold a protest outside the EPA's Newcastle office. We'd love you to join us.

We want to make a lot of noise, so please bring something to help do that. Whistles, pots and pans, tubas, dirt bikes, whatever takes your fancy.