Mt Arthur rehabilitation: geotechnical design and closure lessons for mine engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
Robson Civil Projects has been recognised for record-breaking rehabilitation and land management at BHP’s Mt Arthur Coal Mine in the Hunter Valley, where progressive closure works are reshaping large open-cut pits and overburden dumps into stable final landforms. The contractor has delivered high-volume bulk earthworks, topsoil placement and contour ripping, combined with erosion control structures and native pasture and woodland revegetation tailored to local catchments. For geotechnical and civil teams, the project shows large-scale integration of slope regrading, drainage reconfiguration and long-term stability design within an active coal operation.
Technical Brief
- Robson’s scope extended beyond bulk earthworks to include detailed land management, monitoring and maintenance of rehabilitated areas.
Our Take
Mt Arthur’s coal rehabilitation work sits alongside BHP’s current push to highlight non-coal growth options such as Jansen potash and Australian copper/iron ore, suggesting the company is keen to demonstrate end-of-life discipline at legacy thermal coal assets while capital is redeployed elsewhere.
Among the 45 coal‑keyword pieces in our database, relatively few are tagged to ‘Projects’ and ‘Sustainability’ together, so detailed coverage of closure and rehab at Mt Arthur gives practitioners a rarer case study compared with the more common production or market‑price angles.
Robson Civil Projects’ role at Mt Arthur positions it within a small cohort of Australian contractors that feature in BHP‑linked project stories across commodities, which can give such firms an advantage when bidding on future closure and infrastructure packages as BHP rationalises its coal portfolio in Australia.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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