Greens leader Richard Di Natale has called for a national mining audit to determine if state governments have enough money to cover the full cost of mine rehabilitation.

There are currently around 50,000 abandoned mines around the country — a legacy of the old mining days when companies simply walked away when the profits dried up.

Senator Di Natale has now raised concerns, saying it is unclear if states hold enough in financial bonds to properly rehabilitate mines as they close.

"We need to conduct a national audit that tells us exactly what those liabilities are to ensure that we know exactly what amount of money needs to be spent to rehabilitate mines once they are closed," he said.

Senator Di Natale said the world was moving away from coal and Australia could no longer depend on China or India to boost coal exports.

"The rapid decline in Australia's coal exports in recent years is not a cyclical blip but a structural and terminal decline that will not recover," he said.

Greg Evans, executive director of coal at the Minerals Council of Australia, was quick to reject the claim, labelling it "activism fiction".

"If you look at the numbers from reputable sources such as the International Energy Agency, and indeed our own forecast, you see that Australia will be the largest coal exporter in 2017," he said.

The ABC has obtained figures which reveal that in NSW alone, there are more inactive coal mines than active ones.

While 46 coal mines are currently operational, 55 have been placed in "care and maintenance" — a state in which the mine is not operating but not yet retired.

A further 55 coal mines have been abandoned altogether.

University of Queensland mine rehabilitation expert Dr Peter Erskine said the actual cost of rehabilitation could cost as much as three to 10 times more than what states currently held in bonds.

Dr Erskine said more and more mines were going into care and maintenance where they could avoid expensive rehabilitation costs.

"A lot of coal mines are on very thin margins at the moment, which means a lot more will go into care and maintenance because they won't be able to close completely," he said.
Industry administration 'very secretive'

NSW currently holds around $1.4 billion and Queensland holds around $6 billion in financial bonds for rehabilitation.

But Senator Di Natale said the system in which rehabilitation bonds are administered was "very secretive" and no-one had a clear idea how much it would really cost to fully rehabilitate the mines.

Greg Evans from the Minerals Council said the current regulatory system was adequate.

"I think on the whole Australians are very well satisfied [with] the way the mine industry is a responsible industry, a tremendous employer, pays taxes, pays royalties and is highly regulated with the most stringent environmental conditions in the world," he said.

"This is merely an attempt by the Greens to try and damage a great industry, the Australian coal industry."

In a statement to the ABC, NSW Minister for Industry Resources and Energy Anthony Roberts said taxpayers would not be left with an expensive mining rehabilitation bill.

"The NSW Division of Resources & Energy ensures the people of NSW do not incur a financial liability as a result of mining exploration and production activities," he said.

Senator Di Natale said he was concerned Australians would see a repeat of the James Hardie era where "companies flee, leaving workers abandoned and the public picking up the tab".

He said he would flesh out the details of his national audit and trust fund proposal in a speech at the National Press Club tomorrow.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-29/greens-leader-di-natale-calls-for-national-mining-audit/6814682

Queensland authorities fear a series of ponds containing heavy metals and cyanide could overflow from an abandoned mining site and spill into a nearby river in the Murray-Darling Basin.

An internal government document obtained by the ABC warns that as little as 40 millimetres of rain could cause a discharge from the silver mine near Texas on the Queensland-New South Wales border.

"Discharge water from the site would flow about seven kilometres through small drainage lines to the Dumaresq River," the document stated.

"Well that's frightening because that's only a storm," sheep farmer Ron Morris, whose property is just eight kilometres downstream from the mine, said.

"We're coming into the storm season from now until Christmas time. It only takes one storm to flood the creeks up there at the mine."

The Queensland Environment Department last month sent inspectors to the mine to check on four storage ponds on the site.

They identified "significant management issues associated with acid mine drainage and insufficient contaminated mine water storage capacity to cater for wet season inflows".

The department has told the ABC that testing had identified elevated levels of heavy metals in the water stored at the site, including copper, iron, manganese, zinc and nickel.

It said that while cyanide was detected in samples, they were less than "the level for release to surface waters cited in the International Cyanide Management Code".

The owners of the mine, Texas Silver Mines Pty Ltd, went into liquidation in July.

According to the internal government document, the liquidators advised that "they were ceasing all activities on site and had no money to carry out any works including pumping contaminated water around the site ... the liquidators have issued notice to disclaim the mining lease and have abandoned the site".

The liquidators, Pitcher Partners, said they were within their rights to take this action.

"We are dealing with this matter in accordance with the law and our obligations, all of which we take incredibly seriously," the company said in an email to the ABC.

But the Environment Department said the financial assurance (FA) of $2.06 million held for the mine was not enough to clean up the site.

"In January 2015 a recalculation of that FA identified that the rehabilitation liability may be as high as $9.8 [million]," the internal document stated.

Cattle and crop farmer Tim Ramsay, whose property at Bonshaw upstream from the mine straddles the Dumaresq River, said a spill would be "catastrophic".

"Environmental safeguards should be there so if [a mining company does] go broke, the environment can be cleaned up without it being a heavy burden to taxpayers," Mr Ramsay said.

"If it was to affect the wildlife in the river, or the quality of the produce that we produce, or just the ecosystem in general, it would be catastrophic."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-29/ponds-containing-cyanide-could-spill-into-murray-darling-basin/6806184

Greens leader Richard Di Natale has called for a national mining audit to determine if state governments have enough money to cover the full cost of mine rehabilitation.

Can't the greens go live in caves already and build their own mining/development free utopia ?

Hey guys, here's another side effect of capitalism

Detroit as an example of capitalism off the leash.

Lol this is a major environmental issue and you people cant get past worthless party politics. No wonder nothing gets done in this country anymore, half the adults apparently have the emotional capacity of a 12 year old

Nothing gets done because people are constantly trying to undermine each others policies.

It's funny how people make such a big song and dance over this issue. If these alarmists environmentalists knew the half of it they'd have a fit.

One of the great aspects of capitalism is you can simply uproot and relocate to another city or town with better economic opportunities.

If these alarmists environmentalists knew the half of it they'd have a fit.

One of the great aspects of capitalism is you can simply uproot and relocate to another city or town with better economic opportunities. Whereas in a socialist state everywhere is completely downtrodden and its inhabitants are forced to ensure terrible conditions under the thumb of incompetent authoritarian regime. Capitalism is simply just a better more effective, honest and efficient system than socialism, although that's not to say that some elements of it cannot co-exist with capitalism.

I guess a parallel to how really widespread the Volkswagen scandal ranges...?

The citizens of Detroit might disagree with you about how great it is to just uproot and leave.

Surely there's more to life than the mindless pursuit of profit?

Sure the Commonwealth Bank can save a few dollars when they outsource a call centre to the Philippines but this is where you and I will depart from the capitalist songsheet.

I think (and that's just me) that profit should come with moral obligation to the people you're making that profit from. (You'll disagree and that's fine.)

Put another way lets say 10 people are working in a government agency in a small regional town (with a higher unemployment rate than the average like most small towns) at 80% of their productive capacity. They're not busting their hump but they're not slouching either. In comes an "efficiency and productivity" expert and decides that if you sack 4 staff and rejig things a bit you can save a bucketload of cash.

Well now 6 people are working flat chat and 4 people are on the dole. Those 4 people and their families don't go out to dinner, they don't go to the moves, they have no disposable income so they basically stop spending money and now they don't pay tax and they're a drain on the economy because they're drawing the dole. On top of that Little Johnny and Jane can't afford to play sport, they don't go on school excursions and mum and dad can't take them anywhere on holidays and they're resentful of that as well.

On paper the sacking of those 4 people looks great for the bottom line. Elsewhere it looks pretty ordinary.

I'm not saying employ people to do nothing but I'm not sure outsourcing, redundancies, productivity gains, efficiency dividends are as good as they're cracked up to be. There's huge knock on effects.

Australian children exposed to toxic mining metals do worse at school

Children in mining and smelting towns who are exposed high levels of lead, arsenic and cadmium are more than twice as likely to have developmental disorders than the national average. They also perform lower than neighbouring peers on school tests, our research, published today in the journal Environmental Pollution, reveals.

Children living closest to Broken Hill’s lead and zinc mine who had the highest levels of exposure to toxic air, dust and soils consistently had the lowest literacy and numeracy scores in years three and five. We found similar results in Australia’s two other major lead mining and smelting cities: Mount Isa and Port Pirie.

Exposure to lead and other toxic metals during early childhood can harm the growing brain. Progress is now being made to reduce exposure in the three mining towns. But for children already exposed, the damage cannot be reversed.

https://theconversation.com/australian-children-exposed-to-toxic-mining-metals-do-worse-at-school-48343

Samarco mine tragedy: Toxic mud from Brazil mine spill reaches Atlantic Ocean

A torrent of toxic mud from a deadly mine spill in south-west Brazil that buried a village and contaminated a river basin has reached the Atlantic Ocean.

The waste has travelled at least 500 kilometres since the dam burst more than two weeks ago, killing at least 12 people and leaving 280,000 without water.

"Our objective is to reduce the environmental damage, to mitigate as much as we can," said Luciano Cabral, a municipal biologist working in the area.

"We're united with the same objective to minimise the inevitable impact."

The disaster struck when a dam collapsed at the waste reservoirs of an iron ore mine owned by Samarco, a joint venture between the mining giants BHP Billiton of Australia and Brazil's Vale.

A torrent of yellowish muck burst from the tailings pond, mostly destroying the nearby village of Bento Rodrigues and contaminating the water supply to more than 200 towns.

Twelve people are still missing.

The mine consortium has laid nine kilometres of floating barriers to try to protect plants and animals from the mud, which is full of heavy metals.

The spill contaminated a river basin and has been described by Brazil's environment minister Izabella Teixeira as the worst environmental disaster in the country's history.

Ms Teixeira estimated it would take 30 years to clean up the Doce basin after the mud smothered thousands of fish, turtles and other animals.

"It's clear what happened in the Doce River is the biggest environmental catastrophe in this country's history. We can't let it happen again anywhere," Ms Teixeira told newspaper O Globo.

"Our current environmental laws are insufficient to deal with an accident of this magnitude."

The mud and mining waste have travelled across hundreds of kilometres of river in the states of Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo and were expected to reach the Atlantic Ocean on Friday or Saturday.

Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff has said the government holds all three mining firms — Samarco, Billiton and Vale — responsible for the disaster.

Samarco has already been hit with damages, fines and frozen funds totalling more than $400 million.

The clean-up could cost more than $1 billion, according to Deutsche Bank.

Renowned Brazilian documentary photographer Sebastiao Salgado, whose foundation has been active in efforts to protect the Doce River, toured the area and submitted a $27 billion clean-up proposal to the government.

"Everything died. Now the river is a sterile canal filled with mud," he told O Globo.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-22/brazil-mine-spill-mud-to-hit-atlantic-ocean/6962040

I wonder if he drives a car or uses any kind of appliance? I wonder how he replaced the gold components in the device he is currently using to spout his propaganda on this forum?

A mate of mine is a hardcore greenie and gets all narky when I ask him why he still drives a car. The irony is astounding. Single vehicle trips are inefficient.

The problem with mining is that people who are dense as f*ck see mining problems associated with a lack of engineering and poor workmanship overseas to try and justify killing the industry in Australia. It's like trying to ban alcohol in Australia because someone in Bali got alcohol poisoning :lol:

There is no room on this planet for people who cannot accept any form of mining. The expectation that it will not affect the environment at all is ridiculous.

The very fact he posts at all and has the device to do it on means he no leg to stand on. In fact I'd give him more credibility if he used a quill pen and scroll to do it on...but hang on thats against the environment since paper is used from a tree and a quill requires a feather being plucked from a bird...maybe a rock and a flint instead. :lol: