The need to continue the development of the Ensham mine has led to blast up to 75 m to the Eastern side of a water dam in the vicinity of Ramp 23. The water dam wall is exposed to blastingover a distance of approximately 500 m. The first decision was to determine that theexisting rock pillar between the Eastern side of the water dam and the blasting operations may not be less than 75 m in order to minimise the damage that the blast could generate to the dam wall.It was also necessary to define blasting practices to minimising theblast damage to the rock properties of the dam wall andto avoidadverse effectsfrom vibration and gases generated by thedetonation on structures.For this purpose analyticaldesigns andtest blasts were conducted to assess the ground vibration attenuation within the rock pillar. From this analysis,it was concluded that the best practice to reduce the rock damage was to create a zone of fractured rock adjacent to the side of each production blast.This fractured zone would create an effective filter both for vibration and for gases generated by the blast. This zone of fractured rock was created by firing two buffer rows. In termsof pattern size and powder factor the two buffer rows were designed just to generate a fractured rock zone. To date approximately 500 m have been excavated along the eastern wall of the water dam where each production blast was preceded by a Trim blast. This practice has given good resultswith regard to minimising the damage generated by production blasting.