Signed Response from the Mayor and Our Reply

On 28 October, 2014, as the dust was about to fly about and the noise of heavy earthmoving vehicles ring out along the Wappentake Valley we desperately tried to get someone to pay attention... to do something. Immediately. We wrote this quite heated email and sent it to all City of Greater Bendigo Councillors.

Yesterday, 11 November, 2014, we received the following reply from the Mayor, Cr Barry Lyons. (A pdf copy can be found here.) We thank him once again for taking the time to reply. We have responded in kind and have added that response to this post.


From the Mayor:

Dear Mr Blackey

Re: MANDALAY RESOURCES COSTERFIELD OPERATIONS PTY LTD

Thank you  for your email dated 29 October 2014 regarding Mandalay Resources Costerfield Operations, Lot 3 South Costerfield Graytown Road, Costerfield (Splitters Creek Evaporation Facility).

The City of Greater Bendigo is aware works have commenced at the above property. These works are authorised under Planning Permit DM/501/2013 approved by VCAT and the Work Approval issued by the Department of State Development, Business and Innovation.

With respect to Planning Permit condition 7(b) referred to in your letter, Mandalay Resources PTY LTD have submitted the written certificate prepapred by an EPA appointed environmental auditor which details what the company has done to satisfy the requirements of this condition.

Also, regarding condition 19 of the Planning Permit, at this early stage in the construction of the project (approximately 1 week), no request has been made by the company to provide any records. All monitoring equipment required to be placed on Mandalay's land has been installed and is operational.

I personally inspected the site on Friday, 30 October, together with the City's Compliance Officer and did not see any breach by the mine.

I hope this assists and if you have any further enquiries on this matter, please do  not hesitate to contact Bryce Kilian on (03) 5434 6000.

Yours sincerely

Cr Barry Lyons
MAYOR

***

Our response:


Dear N****,

I note that the covering email to this letter states that it addresses my letter of 10 November, 2014. In fact, it deals with an email sent to Councillors on 28 October, 2014. I surmise that this means I shall receive a response to that latest message in time, too. That would be greatly appreciated.

Please do convey my thanks to the Mayor for his considered response to my (through unfortunate circumstances, somewhat confrontational) email. I have made it a priority to inform the Costerfield Community of his reply and have interpolated some of their reactions in this response. I realise that I have been asked to contact Mr Bryce Kilian for further enquiries, but as this is not really an enquiry, I feel it best and more polite that I personally engage with Cr Lyons and relate these reactions him.

I humbly assume that Cr Lyons means that he "personally inspected the site" on Thursday, 30 October. Friday was 31 October and no work was undertaken that day. Nor was any dust suppression considered to be required for the site on Friday, even apparently by the City's Compliance Officer on the previous day. Certainly none was forthcoming, resulting in the dust debacle of Saturday.

It is heartening that Cr Lyons has taken on a personal role and is assessing the details of this project first-hand. And it is to be hoped this bodes well for a continuing and expanded process of community engagement to address our concerns about the under-regulated impacts of Mandalay's extensive mining operations on our properties and our personal and community well-being.

It seems regrettable, then, that his visit to inspect Lot 2 on the day after the noise and dust had been reported to him by Ms King seems to have led him to the conclusion that there was no breach on the day before. Regrettable, too, is the fact that Cr Lyons travelled all the way to Costerfield to "personally inspect" Lot 2 - we do hope it was to address Ms King's concerns - but could not make his way over the road to personally contact Ms King and Mr Leask and assess the situation from their property and engage with them.

I also humbly note that, even though "all monitoring equipment required to be placed on Mandalay's land has been installed and is operational", this does leave neighbouring property owners unmonitored, and that the dust from the project does not confine itself to Mandalay's land. We hope that this limiting of monitoring and sampling is revisited when the time for requesting records as per condition 19 arrives. No baseline levels are capable of assessment now.

Please do also advise Cr Lyons that the Splitters Creek VCAT decision specifically refers to Lots 1 & 2 and the Crown Land between those two lots and the mine site rather than merely Lot 2 as per his letter; this fact was overlooked during the drawing up of the Planning Permit and Work Plan, which resulted in works commencing on Lot 1 (road, work pad, heavy vehicle storage) in what would appear to be contravention of the VCAT Decision.

I also wonder, N****, whether it would be possible for you to forward to me for my records, as a party to the Splitters Creek VCAT Decision, a copy of the written certificate prepared by the EPA appointed Environmental Auditor, Mr Joe Duran, to which Cr Lyons refers.

Once again, please do thank the Mayor on my behalf for his attention to this matter. I hope to hear from you again shortly.

Kind regards

Steve