910 people responded, in good faith, to the 11,162 page EES. Only 10 of those said the mine was a good idea. The submissions confirmed many of the issues that the community has repeatedly brought up with the proponent.
Kalbar have finally admitted that their water modelling is wrong, they cannot recover the amount of water from the tailings they had claimed they could. This affects not only the amount of water they claim they need Winterfill or bores, but also that the fine tailings are too sloppy to fill pits for rehabilitation.
They are now claiming they will use centrifuges to recover water from the tailings – yet another fanciful idea that not only effectively changes the mine proposal and affects almost every other aspect of the EES – ground and surface water, tailings, rehabilitation, power, greenhouse gas and climate change, air quality, traffic and transport, noise, agriculture, horticulture, socioeconomic. It also has huge impacts for the, already dubious, financial viability of the proposal.
Once again, so much of the proposal seems completely fanciful. Centrifuges have not been used for dewatering tailings on a mineral sands mine of this size. This is a crazy situation, made worse by the fact that they had evidently toyed with the idea some years ago and therefore should have included it for consideration in the EES. As it is they have produced a handful of ‘supplementary’ expert statements giving an opinion on the use of centrifuges. Those statements are worth reading to find out what they don’t say. Kalbar continues to avoid being transparent with the community about the process and its implications.
An overload of prehearing documentation –
As of 12 March 2021 there were 202 pre-hearing documents listed on the Fingerboards Independent Advisory Committee site. https://engage.vic.gov.au/fingerboards-IAC Most of those are because of the inadequacy of the EES documentation and the belated acknowledgement by Kalbar that they had got their water figures wrong. We continue to be astounded at their ineptness and arrogance and their continuing pattern of trying to get away with PR and glossy presentations and dodgy or non-existent science to try to get this most unwanted and environmentally and economically insane mine approved.
Downloading the documents from the IAC site is time-consuming and cumbersome. We will aim to keep an up-to-date and easy to access collection on our ‘Pre hearing documents’ page. https://minefreeglenaladale.org/pre-hearing-documents/
Unfortunately that is not helping people who don’t have easy internet access and/or affordable plans. We are lobbying the IAC to find alternative and sensible methods of providing access for those people.