Jon Lamb, Darwin
Environmentalists, traditional owners and local residents are increasingly concerned over toxic waste and poisonous mine tailings leaching from the abandoned Mt Todd gold mine near Katherine.
Residents on the Edith River, downstream from the mine, believe that an unknown quantity of the 500,000 litres of cyanide solution stored at the mine site has been emptied into the river. One resident told the November 21 Northern Territory News that the cyanide storage "tanks are empty and moved for salving ... but no-one knows where the cyanide is".
Cyanide solution from the mine's tailings dam was responsible for fish kills in the Edith River in 1999 (and possibly in 2000 as well). A massive stockpile of 40 million tonnes of waste rock has also been leaching acid solutions for some time, posing a threat to the nearby watertable.
Mt Todd mine was closed in July 2000 and went under administration when the mine owners went into receivership. Since then little has been done to clean and rehabilitate the site due to government inaction to pursue those responsible for the mess.
Rehabilitation costs for the site at the time of closure were estimated at around $20 million by the administrators. The NT government initially required a start-up rehabilitation bond of only $900,000. The failure of the government to extract the money required from the company (which is now no longer trading) means that the public will have to foot the $19 million bill. However, it looks as though the government is preparing to do as little as possible to ensure a proper rehabilitation process is implemented.
In response to the recent concerns, the NT mines and energy department claims that the cyanide solution has not been removed from the storage tanks. Department deputy director Richard Jackson told the Northern Territory News that "as far as we are concerned it is still in the tanks" and that because removing the solution is very expensive "it will more than likely be put into a tailings dam".
Environment Centre coordinator Peter Robertson has warned that the tailings dam is already leaking and that it overflows regularly. "Then there's a whole series of other chemicals, pollutants and toxins associated with the mining operation which are very inadequately stored on site at the moment and which have the potential to cause a major downstream pollution problem", he told ABC radio on November 21.
The Edith River feeds into the Ferguson River, which in turn feeds into the Daly River, considered one of the few remaining big rivers free from adverse environmental problems and recommended for listing as a place of national heritage.
From Green Left Weekly, December 1, 2004.
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