EPA vs SEPP AQM

EPA

A healthy environment that supports a liveable and prosperous Victoria.

Times used to be that the Environmental Protection Authority was authorised to protect the environment.

Now they're supposed to support prosperity, too. And to keep Victoria, well, "liveable", at least. That might go some way to explaining this:
 

From the ERC Minutes of 1 August, 2007, with regards to a discussion of Air Quality:

[Local Resident ERC Member] B*** asked about grey plumes from the mines and Tom deVries [AGD General Manager] stated that they were probably the result of blasting. B*** asked if they could have caused the apparently anomalous dust deposition results and Colin Burns stated that this could not be the case because the grey plume would not contain particles that would report to a dust deposition gauge.

What follows is a discussion regarding the 2007 EPA publication, State Environment Protection Policy (Air Quality Management) – hereafter ‘SEPP’ or 'SEPP AQM' – and its application or otherwise to Mandalay Resources Costerfield Operations by the Regulators (in this case EPA and DSDBI).

Section 1.1 Purpose: 

All mining and extractive industries have a requirement to comply with SEPP (AQM). An air quality assessment… is required only for proposals requiring an Environment Effects Statement or an EPA Works Approval and Licence or where specifically required by DPI. DPI are likely to request an air quality assessment only when activities that are likely to generate increased emissions of the indicators specified… or will have significantly increased impact at sensitive locations. [Emphasis added.]

The term “extraction”, when applied by the SEPP (p. 6) to “underground mines”, means the

amount of soil rock and ore moved above ground and brought to the surface of the mine. Any emissions from ventilation shafts of the mine must also be taken into account in the estimates of emissions where the shaft is part of the premises. [Emphasis added.] 

From the EPA website. Licences and Approvals:

A works approval permits plant and equipment to be installed, the operation of which will result in one or more of:

·        the discharge of waste to the environment;

·        an increase in, or alteration to, an existing discharge;

·        a change in the way waste is treated or stored.

According to the SEPP:

Respirable crystalline silica [and] arsenic… are Class 3 indicators and require control to the Maximum Extent Achievable (MEA) due to the seriousness of the potential health effects associated with exposure to these substances. MEA goes beyond best practice and considers what can be done on a site specific basis rather than industry wide scenario.

As many dusts from quarrying and mining can be expected to contain silica, the MEA provisions apply to those activities that give rise to emissions of silica (eg crushing). Arsenic and it’s [sic] compounds are also listed as class 3 indicators and this provides additional justification for the application of MEA to dusts from mining operations in gold mining areas where natural crustal arsenic levels are likely to be elevated.

As we understand it, Mandalay Resources’ Costerfield Operations represent a “Medium Mine or quarry between 150,000 tonnes/yr and 500,000 tonnes/yr extraction” that lies in a “Rural area close to residences (less than 500m from the limit of work described in the approved DPI work plan or final EES)”. As such it would appear to be subject to the possibility of (at least) a Level 2 assessment according to Table 1 of the SEPP given the installation of equipment – a crusher – that is expected to “discharge waste to the environment”.

(We use the qualifier “at least” because the gloss of level 1 assessment at p. 5 of the SEPP seems to be an assessment of the applicable level against different criteria, and notes that such an

assessment is required when developments are located close to residential areas or urban area and have the potential to give rise to significant off-site impacts. These assessments are the most rigorous and require the most extensive modelling and monitoring data.)

Once again, the SEPP states that given the requirement for an air assessment, “the following indicators must be assessed”:

·        PM₁₀ (Particles with mean aerodynamic diameter less than 10 microns)

·        PM_2.5 (Particles with mean aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 microns)

·        Respirable crystalline silica (defined as the PM_2.5 fraction)

Special consideration is given in the SEPP to the possible need for assessment of “other substances”, “depending on the location of the mining or extractive operations”. Among the substances explicitly named are arsenic and, under the rubric ‘heavy metals’, antimony. 

Page 8 pf the SEPP states that in

areas where background concentrations of arsenic are unknown, a risk assessment maybe [sic] undertaken to assess the potential impacts of the mining operation. In these situations the risk arising from emissions from the activities on the site must not exceed a lifetime cancer risk of 1 in a million.

According to section 3.4 of the SEPP, Monitoring data required prior to conducting air quality assessment, the Level 2 Assessment of Air Quality, requires

Continuous representative 24-hour PM10 and PM2.5 data for a 12-month period, representative analysis of crystalline silica (PM2.5 fraction) and heavy metal content of PM10.

Level 1 data requirements are much more rigorous, requiring “real time continuous 24-hour” data.

There is a triad - Source – Pathway – Receptor - employed in studies of waste management that seeks to identify risk through the possibility of contaminant escape.  The concept is as simple as it looks. (The provided link deals with groundwater but the concept is the same for airborne contaminants.) For pollution to take place, all three of these conditions must and can be identified: the source of pollution, its pathway into the environment and the receptors that will be affected by its escape.

With the above in mind we have asked the regulators to:

1.    Please confirm airflow of 159m³/s at 5.5m/s (19.8km/h) through the mine and that this air, after exposure to the prevailing conditions underground, is emitted via the exhaust/ventilation system into the Costerfield environment at that same rate, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (or as close as the mine can get to operating those hours).

2.      Please advise us of the filtration capabilities of the exhaust/ventilation system employed by the mine prior to April/May of this year (if it has changed, of course…) and when blasting in Cuffley commenced, to mitigate its emissions to the Costerfield environment and whether it was/is capable of capturing PM₁₀, PM_2.5 and respirable silica. Also please advise the details of EPA’s monitoring of this system.

3.      Please advise us of the total daily quantities of emissions via the ventilation shafts and their constituent elements.

4.      Please advise us as to if or how these quantities differ during periods of underground blasting and how EPA has determined this.

5.      Please advise us of the total quantities of the blasting materials used by Mandalay Resources and AGD since 2007. And a listing of their respective constituent chemical components. Please also advise how the underground conditions and these chemical compounds change during blasting (i.e. airflow with respect to the 6m/s limit to prevent dust uplift; vapourisation and generation of submicron particles) and the expected quantities (volumes) of submicron emissions from the blasted ore body.

(Mandalay Resources is currently licenced to store 40 tonnes of blasting explosives, 10km of detonating cord and 21,000 detonators in its onsite Augusta magazine. Reference to their blasting logs will provide details of the rate at which these substances are employed, one would assume.)

Professors Brian Priestly and Malcolm Sim may be interested to see all of these figures.

6.      Please advise us of the results of EPA testing of the quality of the air from the ventilation shafts for the period since 2007.

7.      Please provide us with any and all of the EPA data regarding PM₁₀, PM_2.5 and respirable silica levels in the Costerfield area for the period since 1997, and the extent of EPA’s investigation into the release of Class 3 Indicators into the environment since 2007.

8.      Please advise us as to how the current EPA application of the SEPP AQM has ensured and is continuing to ensure “that the air quality objectives of the SEPP AAQ are [being] met” at Costerfield and that the operations there are compliant. Past and present.

9.      Please advise us as to how the laughable piece of hastily-cobbled dust deposition equipment supposedly employed under AS/NZS 3580 - that we have all seen and surely shaken our heads at - conforms to the SEPP’s stated intention to achieve meaningful data collection to the Maximum Extent Achievable. (Hint: Don't even mention AS/NZS 3580 until you can keep birdshit, ants and maggots out of your wine flagon...)

***

That SEPP document! Wow! The regulators really should read it at some stage. It’s almost as if some of it was written specifically to deal with Costerfield, by crikey! 

Almost exactly as if… check out Section 3.6. 

But this is good because it gives us an insight into what actually happened in Costerfield in 1997-8, even if the Minister isn’t going to be open and tell us all: PM10 antimony in water tanks near mining operations. A "management strategy" should be in place!

According to the then-Minister's 1998 letter it was“unlikely that recent operations were the sole cause of the high levels of antimony in drinking water". Indeed. 

We offered an open book assessment. Told them to take their time; but not too much time. We'd like the best, most detailed answer they can provide, please.

Something to match the trouble we "Receptors" in Costerfield have been forced to take to do their job for them: discovering "Sources" and "Pathways".

They are allowed to consult. Perhaps regarding the DPI’s or DSDBI’s lack of a request for an air quality assessment in response to activities likely to generate increased emissions of the indicators specified; activities like blasting; Class 3 Indicators like arsenic compounds and respirable silica.

Perhaps DSDBI can  join in the conversation and tell us their reasoning. 

A crusher is "expected" to encounter silica and so may produce the Class 3 Indicator respirable silica, according to the SEPP. Any comment on this, EPA? Results from testing? DSDBI?

Perhaps they can tell us why an assessment was not commenced with an EPA Works Approval for the crusher or for the construction of any of the dams and evaporative facilities on the site. All of these are dust-generating operations, . Arsenic compounds are a Class 3 Indicator. Arsenic.

And this was Costerfield, for goodness sake! And after what had happened in 1997-8! What had happened in 1997-8, by the way?