Letter to the Minister II - Best Practice Required

(Update - We quickly received what passes as a reply from Government these days. 

The inadequacy of the response will be obvious to you when you read it here. 

We are expecting to receive a real reply from the Minister, soon.)


Dear Minister

We are not anti-mining.

We are livid at the regulators’ apparent (and it is blatantly apparent!) disregard for our health and well-being; we are incensed by the regulators’ continued refusal to examine the incremental expansion of the mine within the context of an increased and increasing development in our town over two decades; we are dissatisfied with the silence, evasion and obfuscation we receive when we endeavour to have our voices heard.

Please do take the time to read and respond to the matters raised below. Sometime before November would be grand.

***

Minister, why have the regulators been so reluctant for so long to impose and enforce best practice and beyond for the mine in Costerfield? The mine expects to be regulated. This is a mine that must deal with both antimony and arsenic, two very toxic substances, the extraction of which requires special attention and diligent regulation.

We know this because the conditions prevailing in Costerfield are directly referenced in the EPA's 2007 SEPP AQM (refer to Section 3.6). Yet, we maintain, because of under-regulation, Mandalay Resources has been permitted to vent sub-micron particulate material without mitigation or monitoring since 13 February, 2006.

Mandalay Resources has itself, repeatedly and emphatically stated and displayed its willingness to employ best practice in Costerfield. And if they can’t find it in Victoria, they look elsewhere. This kind of pro-active Corporate Responsibility should be actively encouraged by our regulatory system.

The latest expression of Mandalay Resources’ desire to institute stridently prudent construction parameters over its infrastructure was made at the recent VCAT hearing regarding the raising of the walls of the Brunswick and Bombay Dams. There, Mandalay Resources committed, somewhat ludicrously, it should be noted, but, nevertheless quite magnanimously, to providing storm mitigation works to deal with a 1-in-100,000 year storm to satisfy conditions and assuage community concerns; "greater than Noah" was the Chairman's tongue-in-cheek observation.

(We are happy to give Mandalay Resources and its lawyers the benefit of the doubt for their good intentions here. The prospect of a 1-in-100,000 year storm that would not wash away the unprepared land around the dams would make a "gesture" such as this very nearly a mocking of the VCAT process, if it was intentional. The VCAT Members, however, are exemplary, have our utmost confidence and would no doubt see through such shenanigans, if that is, indeed, what they were.)

But we are convinced Mandalay Resources are genuine because this desire for best practice has not been raised on only one occasion. Some further examples will illustrate an obvious point:

·        Mandalay touts its “majority voting policy” as “[r]eflecting best practice for TSX-listed issuers” on page 20 of its Annual Report of 2013. The investors get best practice!

·        International Mining Magazine ran a story on 4 November 2013 in which it holds up Mandalay as an example of a company employing “a best practices solution” in flotation technology. In its Cerro Bay operations in Southern Chile.

·        This from Mandalay’s 2012 Safety and Health Policy: A commitment to “Practice continuous improvement in occupational safety and health performance utilising best practice procedures and taking into account evolving knowledge and technology”. 

Continuous improvement and evolving technologies take place in areas outside Health and Safety, Minister. Best practice would involve continual standards upgrading and application in the face of technological advances. Mandalay’s words, not ours, Minister, and we absolutely agree.

Make it Law, Minister.

 Mandalay has this to say about the development of its latest acquisition, the Björkdal gold mine in Sweden. Best practice improves production and makes amends for previous shortcomings:

Over the generations of different junior company ownership, the difficulties of dealing properly with the nugget effect obscured the benefits of best practice orebody mapping, drilling, sampling and modelling.  Mandalay will reassert best practice, which is expected to reduce total exploration cost by accelerating wide-spaced and infill drilling while reducing the previous practice of expensive exploration by large-scale drifting across and on veins.

·        Between 4.40pm and 5.05 pm on Tuesday 20 November 2012, during the International Mine Management Conference at the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne, A Mandalay Manager chaired a Session discussion entitled "Using Best Practice Operations as a Strategy for Attracting and Retaining Professional People".

Let's help Mandalay in this endeavour by applying best practice requirements to Costerfield. World's best practice will allow Mandalay to attract and retain the best professional people in the world… we’d like to see them all in Costerfield!



The above initiative is obviously working for Mandalay. Their undoubtedly professional staff are documented as possessing a "career purpose" entailing the mentoring and coaching of "staff and co-workers on best practice to create a safety conscious environment and instil the values of integrity" for themselves and for the company.

Let's help them achieve this purpose!

Minister, we can see this same spirit of excellence confirmed in SRK Consulting’s Costerfield Operations NI 43 1-1 report, prepared “for the investing public” (p. iii) to comply with Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects applied by the Canadian security regulatory authorities” (p. iii). So, of course, Canadian best practice is applied. Canadian investors apparently expect it! 

And

And even

Industry best practice to satisfy the “investing public”… on numerous occasions.

Minister, is it not time to include the people of Costerfield in this drive to bring mining into the 21^st Century in Victoria by applying stringent precautionary health, environmental and industry best practice, rather than being satisfied with its application to the voting rights of Canadian investors?

Mandalay wants the best. Unfortunately, when it comes to employing best practice in Victoria, the company must look elsewhere to achieve its aims. Because ours is just not good enough, Minister.

When it comes to ventilation of the mine at Costerfield, for example, the above report, from SRK/Mandalay (it's a "collaborative effort") declares that because “the Victorian Mining Act doesn’t stipulate any minimum requirements", they have employed the best practice standard utilised in Western Australia to protect their workers from the hazards of underground mining, e.g., diesel particulates.

Sound of screeching brakes, Mr Minister! Mr Premier! Let's read that again.

There is no minimum standard for the ventilation of mines in the Victorian Mines Act 1958.

Is that true, Minister? It certainly looks to be the case to us.

If it's not, then Mandalay Resources should be in very big trouble. If it is... what has been happening in Victoria? Since 1958? These are conditions that should be enshrined in the Legislation and in each and every Mining License and Planning Permit to protect the safety of mine workers, their families and the communities in which they work.

No wonder SRK went to WA for best practice bragging rights. They weren’t going to find them in Victoria, were they, Minister?

No minimum standards in the Act means that under-regulation is almost inevitable even though it is technically impossible.

And the result has been that NO MONITORING OF PM10 and PM2.5 EMISSIONS TO THE COSTERFIELD AIR was even considered for eight years!

 

These are the conditions for a perfect storm, Minister.

A perfect dust storm.

But Minister, when the regulators eventually drew Mandalay’s attention to the dust, the company was, to their credit, immediately forthcoming in underwriting the application of real-time dust monitoring the regulators should have had in place already. And we understand that the company is continuing to contribute. Such actions certainly indicate the “strong local management at the point of impact… co-ordinated across the Company for maximum effect” that Mandalay itself claims represents its principles of Corporate Responsibility. Minister, as we have shown elsewhere, industry has been concerned with the mitigation of its emissions for a long time. It is time the regulators followed suit.

The recent installation of a Reverse Osmosis plant by Mandalay is further evidence of a commitment to best practice. It may be possible to achieve significant amelioration of previous damage to the groundwater system by continued and increased flows of treated water into the creek system. Our interactions with Mandalay Resources have assured us that it is the EPA that is hindering year-round releases. The regulator. By imposing upon a creek system conditions that reflect the scientific uncertainty underlying the baseline conditions in Costerfield. 

Victorian regulators need to confirm, adopt and enforce WORLD’S BEST PRACTICE AND BEYOND as the minimum standard for mining in this state. We owe it to the mining industry, to the generations who will work in that industry, to the people who accommodate mining within their broader communities, and to the environment, that it may be preserved for future generations.

Minister, the four stakeholders above represent the guiding principles of Ecologically Sustainable Development. Adoption of World’s Best Practice makes them all winners.

Minister, Mandalay wants best practice. And we all know that the mine is not going anywhere in a hurry. Enough ore has been extracted from Costerfield to keep them going till at least mid-2017. And they’re not stopping.

The people of Costerfield (and no doubt Victoria) want World’s Best Practice. Don’t they deserve it?

Minister, the recent decision by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Decision (VCAT) regarding Splitters Creek Evaporation Facility specifically references the objecting residents’ demands for the instituting of precautionary best practice by drawing on the example set by the South Australian EPA as representative of that standard.

To institute World’s Best Practice in licencing and permitting would mean that residents – and thus the mine  - would no longer have to waste the valuable time and resources of VCAT in order to have precautionary conditions imposed that are standard elsewhere and that were actually on the Permit for mining in 1996! This will happen again unless things are made so simple that even Victorian Regulators won’t be confused by their responsibilities.

Minister, why do the regulators not want best practice? We don’t mean Victorian best practice, which is time and again outdone by other states, but WORLD’S BEST PRACTICE and beyond. Victoria is not even the best in Australia, Minister.

Mr Premier?

The residents of Costerfield have been short-changed by the regulators for far too long. Institution of World’s Best Practice would validate their substantially-evidenced concerns, largely assuage their alarm regarding threats to their health and the wellbeing of their families, community and environment, and would provide Mandalay Resources and the state of Victoria with a mining operation that could be the envy of the mining world.

A green mine… a green and gold mine if you want it!… the best of the best… why not, Minister? Why not Mr Premier?

We want to help you get it done for the good of us all.

***

Please advise us that the Government and your Department are currently instituting an Environmental Effects Statement for the Costerfield Operations to address the scientific uncertainty that plagues this mining operation after a decade of documented under-regulation.

Please advise us that you are preparing to place requirements for World’s Best Practice and Beyond (MEA) into Mining License 4073 and any consequent (because these things cannot be viewed in isolation) mining license or permit for Mandalay Resources’ Costerfield Operations.

Please advise us that your government is currently preparing to undertake a full review of the mining regulatory system in order to place more stringent controls on extractive industry practice.

And please advise us that you are doing all of this with the health and well-being of the people of Costerfield and of Victoria as your priority.

Regards

Wappentake Valley Community