COSTERFIELD

PROPOSED COSTERFIELD MINE TAILINGS DAM POTENTIAL THREAT TO HEATHCOTE’S RURAL COMMUNITY

MEDIA RELEASE

July 2024

The State of Victoria may be about to fast track Mandalay Resources plan to construct a $84 million tailings dam on their Costerfield mine site.

The government considers the project to be of ‘economic significance’ to Victoria, meaning that there is a limited opportunity for the local community and Bendigo Council to have a say.

The Canadian owned mining company, Mandalay Resources, has recently released 1000’s of pages of the project’s technical documents.

Greater Bendigo Council is no longer the responsible authority to make sure the project is managed properly. It’s unclear what government agency or department community members can go to if they have concerns during the project’s construction phase or during tailing dam operations.

The safety of Heathcote’s rural community is at serious risk should a catastrophic wall failure or overflow occur from a Mandalay Resources tailings dam. Tailings dam wall failure is a serious issue across Australia. In 2018, a catastrophic failure of the Newcrest Cadia tailings dam polluted a large area of farmland in western NSW. Currently Mandalay’s Tailings Dam Safety Emergency Plan doesn’t describe a credible procedure for the limited time available to evacuate mine workers and residents once wall failure occurs.

To date, Mandalay Resources hasn’t rehabilitated its existing tailings dams, mine water evaporation dams or mine water storage. Minimal monitoring of water quality in and around the many existing tailings dams has been done by Mandalay Resources. Several hundred hectares of land surrounding the mine site are heavily polluted at depth with arsenic and antimony.

The small village of Costerfield has been significantly depopulated due to the noxious effect of the Costerfield mine. Many houses in Costerfield are now abandoned or are owned by Mandalay Resources. Costerfield’s few remaining residents have been ordered by the Department of Health to not drink or shower in water from their own rainwater tanks. Mandalay has been required to provide bottled water, or alternately filtered water, to the remaining residents.

Mandalay’s current Rehabilitation Bond for the Costerfield mine site is $4.1 million, held as a paper bond by the state department, Earth Resources Regulation Victoria. This small bond, even if it was able to be recovered by ERR, could not even be considered an amount suitable for even cosmetic rehabilitation of such a substantial industrial mining operation. The complexity of properly rehabilitating the existing tailings dams and processing plant would probably require a Rehabilitation Bond in excess of $200 million.

MEDIA RELEASE ENDS

For more information / media contact
Ian Magee, Spokesperson for the Alliance for Responsible Mining Regulation
enquiries@ARMRvic.com