MMG’s proposed Bobadil Heights Filtered Stack Tailings project is a welcome shift to twenty-first century practices that will remove the need to flood rainforests with acid producing sulphide tailings. MMG have been promoting two options for tailings storage at the Rosebery mine following five years of community opposition to their controversial proposed tailings dam at McKimmie Creek in Takayna.
Today, our Foundation has written to Federal Minister for the Environment Murray Watt and urged him to set aside the assessments of tailings dams at McKimmie Creek and Exe Creek and commence the assessment of the Bobadil Heights Filtered Stack Tailings project. “Where there is an avoidable impact on matters of national environmental significance the EPBC Act requires that avoidance be adhered to and Minister Watt has the responsibility to protect the environment,” said Scott Jordan, Bob Brown Foundation Takayna Campaigner.
“We welcome MMG adopting a twenty-first century approach to tailings management. Filtered Stack Tailings on their current mine site with the proposed removal of high sulphide pyrites is a significant step forward in the company’s approach to mitigating it’s environmental impacts,” said Scott Jordan.
“MMG have recently presented two options for ongoing tailings storage. A filtered stack tailings facility at Bobadil adjacent to the current tailings dam, or a new tailings dam in forest on Exe Creek south west of Rosebery. Of the two options they are currently exploring, the Bobadil Filtered Stack Tailings facility is vastly better option. No loss of rainforest valleys and the species that live in them, less acid mine drainage risks, and utilisation of an existing degraded area. Our message to them is that they should pick this one.”
“We congratulate the over three thousand Australians who turned out to stop MMG’s previous plan to flood the rainforest at McKimmie Creek, including the over 100 who were arrested. Without their efforts with our Foundation over the past five and a half years, this rainforest valley would have been lost and submerged under a growing lake of acid producing sulphide mine tailings. We say to them that change comes through action, and you took that action. Their commitment has seen this company shift from declaring that flooding McKimmie Creek was the only option, to now actively pursuing real twenty first century solutions that have never been deployed in Tasmania.”
