Gold lust threatens water catchment

John Wilson

The NSW Labor government is allowing a private company to destroy an irreplaceable public asset, risking downstream communities, industries and jobs.

Near Tenterfield, in northern NSW, Ross Mining has all but final approval for open cut gold mines involving the use of thousands of tonnes of cyanide and arsenic in sensitive headwaters of the Clarence River.

The Timbarra plateau is revered by Aboriginal people as a place of creation, initiation and healing.

The ecology is complex, blending subtropical, temperate, coastal, central and tablelands influences in a unique high altitude wetland habitat. Being isolated, it is a natural sanctuary for more than 20 vulnerable species, including the endangered Hastings River mouse, brush-tailed rock wallaby and stuttering frog.

The state government promised to make Timbarra a national park. But it also assured Ross Mining it would not impede exploration or mining there and issued a mining licence just two days after halting the Lake Cowal mine.

"The Timbarra Gold Mining Project falls within the richest and most diverse part of the plateau ... considered crucial to the area's fauna", reported northern zone zoologist David Scott.

According to former National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) consultant Harry Parnaby, "The fauna impact study provides inadequate information".

For minute traces of gold, Ross Mining will blast, haul and crush 30 million tonnes of granite. It will treat it with thousands of tonnes of cement and cyanide, plus lime, hot caustic soda and hydrochloric acid, releasing kilotonnes of arsenic not accounted for in the EIS.

Dams on porous sand and waste rock dumps on steep slopes of unstable gravel in a high rainfall area have the makings of a disaster not unlike that at Ok Tedi in PNG.

The mine would leave voids in the landscape half a kilometre long, 250 metres wide and 130 metres deep. One of these in the course of Duncan's Creek would take 10 years to fill. Eight or more are being contemplated.

Lethal cyanide ponds will be open to birds and animals, and the company won't guarantee that token plastic sheets will keep the poisons from ground water, rivers, communities, industries and the food chain.

The NPWS did not invite applications for gazetting Timbarra as an "Aboriginal place" before approving the mines that will desecrate the area. For millennia, Aboriginal people performed religious duties to the land. Now they're allowed to visit Timbarra only by prior consent and accompanied by an NPWS representative.

The NSW Environment Protection Authority says, "The EIS did not provide a satisfactory assessment of all costs and benefits associated with the project". It failed in assessing pollution risks and in protecting endangered species, indigenous culture and downstream communities and industries.

The state government requires only $3 million as a deposit against default and for cleaning up the area. Yet BHP paid $500 million damages over Ok Tedi and the legal bills over the USA's Summitville mine were US$500 million before the clean-up. Corrected for size, these figures suggest that at least $25 million is a more appropriate deposit for Timbarra.

Taxpayers will pay around $2.25 million a year to the project in the form of the diesel fuel rebate to Ross Mining.

The project has received privileged treatment from the government. The granting of Ross Mining's licence to pump 2.5 million litres of water a day from the Timbarra River was followed by an embargo on other water users.

A downstream licence to graze was cancelled without compensation after the licensee opposed the mine. Other rural ventures to be spoiled by blasting and pollution weren't notified by Tenterfield Council, which fobbed off inquiries by saying, "They're just reworking old tailings".

Melbourne solicitors Slater and Gordon, who successfully sued BHP over Ok Tedi, are now acting against Ross Mining over the Timbarra project.

Timbarra is a new rallying point in the battle to replace exploitation with sustainable economics. The north-eastern environment movement is mobilising to that end. For more information telephone (041) 857 4863 or (066) 221 302.

[John Wilson is a member of the Timbarra Protection Coalition.]

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