The usual approval route for coalmines has been the controversial Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, viewed by its critics as little more than a revolving door of successful applications.

With Bickham such a hot potato, the Government sent it off to one of its planning assessment commission's panels, which had been introduced in November 2008 with powers that include project determination.

The commission's original terms in November last year were to examine Bickham's water issues but Bickham director John Richards said things became much harder when the inquiry was expanded to include the "other issues" that went on to constitute a substantial part of its report.

Interestingly, the panel appears to be as critical of NSW planning laws as it is of the Bickham proposal itself.

"The commission notes that merit assessment under Part 3A is unlikely to be capable of assessing or resolving the broader competing land use issues," the report's executive summary concludes.

Referring to the 2005 planning department report: "It also assumed [wrongly in the commission's view] that these broader social and economic issues could be dealt with adequately at the environmental assessment stage for individual mines."

The panel said that even if a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis could be prepared by the proponent ". . . such a study could never have credibility with the community or competing interests".

It said no further coalmining applications should be considered in the shire before a "comprehensive study of the competing land-use options" is undertaken.

But even then, "the commission is of the view that the existence of a premier thoroughbred breeding industry and open-cut coal mining are likely to be found to be incompatible land uses".

The panel described the Upper Hunter as "the Kentucky of Australia" but as one coal executive noted in response, Kentucky might have a reputation for horse-racing, but it's also one of the US's largest coal producers.

The Kentucky issue is one example of what some in the coal industry believe was inherent bias in the commission's report.

They say it has taken anecdotal concerns by the opponents, and elevated them over the detailed evidence presented by Bickham.

The commission's criticisms of Bickham's employment predictions has also raised eyebrows. The mine's likely economic impacts were calculated by the well-respected Hunter Valley Research Foundation (HVRF), which is looking at whether it should formally respond to the commission's criticisms.

After itemising nine problems with the report, the panel said: "In the commission's opinion the analysis is not rigorous and the assertions made are not necessarily supported by the evidence presented."

The foundation's director of research, Andrew Searles, said this week he was surprised to find the report was criticised, because the type of research the foundation did for Bickham was the same sort of "conservative" economic modelling - based on years of surveying Hunter firms - that it had done without question for years.

The commission said "economic and workforce data used for the mine component were supplied by the mine proponent and not verified independently".

Searles said, "The only input that Bickham had was to give us their expected workforce.

"We believe we were rigorous, accurate and careful in drawing reasonable conclusions," Searles said.

THE lines had been drawn on Bickham since 1999 when the proponents - Maitland business families the Cants (owners of the Bloomfield and Rix's Creek coalmines) and their associates, the Foster family - were granted their exploration licence.

From the start, high-profile Upper Hunter landholders like former model and TV presenter Patrice Newell and her partner, broadcaster (and favourite target of conservatives everywhere) Phillip Adams, were lined up against the mine. Newell, particularly, is one of a small but dedicated band of locals who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to keep Bickham in front of those who mattered.

But if Bickham had a turning point it was when the really big players - such as Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and his Darley Stud - began to throw their weight behind the anti-mine campaign.

In the days after the decision, national media identified a roll-call of identities, including former prime minister Bob Hawke, former governor-general Mike Jeffery, broadcaster Alan Jones, Harvey Norman boss and horse industry heavyweight Gerry Harvey, advertising guru John Singleton and actor Jack Thompson, as helping to defeat the mine.

Another anti-Bickham name is fund manager and Scone property owner David Paradice, whose Paradice Investment Management advertises as managing "$5.9 billion of assets for institutional and high net worth clients".

One of his brothers is Wej Paradice, who is effectively on the other side of the debate as chief executive of the HVRF. Paradice is also chairman of the State Government's Hunter Central Rivers Catchment Management Authority but "wearing his HVRF hat" he believes the planning commission has "not assessed our [Bickham] report with the rigour it deserves".

"Given the reputation of the foundation on those issues [of economic credibility] I am looking at whether we do write to the commission about this," Paradice said.

For their part, Bickham's proponents are taking a low-key approach to the decision. Richards gave a measured response to the decision two Fridays ago at a Rutherford coal lunch hosted by the Hunter Business Chamber, but his general response to the decision is that it remains too early to tell what will happen.

What those involved with Bickham do wonder, however, is whether the decision would have been any different if a BHP or an Xstrata or a Rio Tinto - a company with major political might - had been the Bickham proponent and not a family consortium that, while wealthy by Hunter community standards, still has to run their operations, as Cant said recently, "on the smell of an oily rag".

Environmentalists, naturally enough, are celebrating the Bickham refusal.

As Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon put it: "This is a great win for one community, but it only has wider significance if it is the start of a genuine shift by the NSW government from its addiction to damaging coalmining to investing in clean, sustainable energy production.

"Knocking back this mine because of the $2.4 billion thoroughbred industry is a drop in the ocean, with many other mining proposals throughout NSW threatening precious water supplies and local industries.

"A true beginning will occur when the Government gives appropriate weight to the impact of all coalmine proposals on local communities and the environment."

Many people outside of the coal industry will say that the Government got this one right in rejecting Bickham.

As the growing outcry over the environmental degradation of Singleton and Muswellbrook surely shows, the billions of dollars a year in income generated by the coal industry are coming at a cost.