Bendigo residents on an environmental review committee say a goldminer who is establishing a new underground mine east of Canberra won't have enough money to rehabilitate inactive sites near the Victorian goldmining city.
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Unity Mining established the committee as part of a licensing agreement with the Victorian government. It is comprised of representatives of government agencies and of three mining areas, Kangaroo Flat, Eaglehawk and Woodvale. Unity Mining ceased mining at Bendigo in 2011 and operations are on a care-and-maintenance standing. Community representatives say an environmental bond of $5.5 million for the Bendigo operations is inadequate.
Unity Mining general manager, marketing and strategy, Ben Hill rejected the residents concerns, saying the company's environmental obligations were regularly reviewed and protected through cash-backed bonds of more than $5.5 million.
Mr Hill said an environmental bond for the Dargues project at Majors Creek near Braidwood was in excess of $3 million for the protection of planned disturbances of the area.
Gary Davis represents Woodvale, a farming community north of Bendigo, where evaporation ponds cover about 1800x800metres of land.
A retired consulting engineer, Mr Davis said the ponds would have about 60,000 tonnes of salt and between 40,000 to 60,000 tonnes of arsenic left over from mining.
He believes about $10 million should be set aside to rehabilitate the ponds to farmland, but the bond for this particular operation was about $1.5 million. He said there was no guarantee the land would be returned as farmland.
He said state government departments had shown little interest in resolving community concerns.
Retired engineer and Eaglehawk representative Ian Magee said: ''Unity has big liabilities, massive mullock heaps on the mine site which have to be re-shaped, recontoured and returned into a national park, it has to be rehabilitated.
''The resources required are going to be way beyond the bond money that has been lodged.''
Kangaroo Flat representative Peter Foreman, a former company chief executive who lectured in finance at Deakin University before retiring, said the big question for Unity was where to process ore from Dargues in Majors Creek.
Mr Hill said some components of the Bendigo gold processing plant would be transported to Dargues, the remainder would be used for concentrate processing. (Dargues licence does not permit cyanide processing.)
He said the gold-rush era in Bendigo left a unique issue in relation to groundwater. ''Unity has been proactive in engaging all facets of community regulators and all levels of government on this issue,'' Mr Hill said.
''All participants will acknowledge Unity's contribution to the resolution of this regional issue, which is not of the company's making.''
Unity told the Australian Securities Exchange this month it had a financing agreement with Commonwealth Bank for $45 million to develop Dargues Gold Mine, subject to credit approval. It said funding from Deutsche Bank established by Dargues previous owner, Cortona, had been terminated. The Deutsche Bank finance was subject to approval for taking gold concentrate off-site to the mothballed London Victoria treatment plant at Parkes, an arrangement under challenge in the NSW Land and Environment Court.
