By Philippa Stanford
ADELAIDE — Western Mining Corporation (WMC) is set to operate one of the world's top 10 copper mines and Australia's largest uranium mine with the announcement on July 15 of a $1.25 billion expansion of its Olympic Dam mine in South Australia.
The key to this expansion is the soaring price of uranium, which has more than doubled from US$7 to US$16 a pound in the past year due to a shortage of weapons grade uranium. With this expansion, annual uranium production will rise from 1200 to 3700 tonnes, which WMC hope to sell through new long-term contracts to be finalised within 18 months.
Olympic Dam production began in 1988, following the discovery of one of the world's largest uranium deposits and the fifth largest copper deposit. In addition to lifting export earnings from Olympic Dam from $270 million to around $600 million by 2001, WMC claims that there will be more than 1000 temporary construction jobs at the mine and 200 permanent jobs created through the expansion.
This expansion, like others, has been promoted as an economic bonanza for the depressed South Australian economy. But the extravagant claims of jobs and royalties from the mine's operation have so far failed to materialise. The job forecast declined from 5000 direct jobs in 1979 to 2430 in 1982. In July, there were 950 people working at the Roxby Downs mine.
Environmental activists have also raised concerns about the impact of this latest expansion. Dee Margetts from the WA Greens said, "It is unacceptable that the Coalition government has refused to undertake an environmental impact assessment of the Roxby Downs expansion, given the negative environmental impact of the mine ... This expansion will mean a doubling of uranium mining tailings, which WMC has already proven to have mismanaged."
The mine's tailings dam was not built according to the design set out in the original EIS, and in 1994 a large water seepage was discovered. Water for the mine's operations is drawn from the Great Artesian Basin, an area for which environmentalist are seeking World Heritage Status.
According to Margetts, "Tripling this current water consumption will have a severe effect on the water supplies in the basin and the water available to sustain the ecosystem in the region". The impacts of the mine's operations on the mound springs and the initial inaction over the tailings dam leak point to the need for an effective independent environmental monitoring authority.
Friends of the Earth have a range of environmental concerns about Roxby's current operations as well as its expansion. WMC has avoided consulting with the Arabunna people, the traditional custodians of the mine and township's water source, and with the Kokotha people, custodians of the mine site.
In the very last hours of the Keating Labor government, environment minister John Faulkner signed papers giving WMC approval to expand operations at Roxby Downs without an environmental impact statement. Only two years earlier, Faulkner described the design and operations of the tailings system there as "clearly inadequate".