Dust lies at the heart of current and past health concerns in Costerfield.
And LIES about dust form a cornerstone of regulatory involvement in Costerfield.
When it serves their purposes in exonerating mineral extractive industries, the regulators are always eager to point out the naturally dusty conditions in the town of Costerfield. It's all those dusty roads and dusty paddocks that are the problem. It's the sheep.
And any contamination that occurs must have been caused by this errant and naturally-occurring dust. It certainly can't have been caused by a mine. No! never!
But how would they know? No dust monitoring of any acceptable form has taken place in Costerfield since 13 February 2006. 2006.
EPA vs SEPP AQM
The employment of outdated modelling by DSDBI - in the deliberate absence of the EPA - led to reprehensible, dangerous and totally unscientific conclusions about the dispersal of dust and particulate material in the area. Conclusions that were accepted and that remained as the underlying principles guided monitoring - or the absence of monitoring - for nearly a decade.
Population Density Determines Dust Dispersal Rates
The Department of Health, the Environment Protection Authority, the Department of State Development, Business and Innovation, Bendigo Council. All of these regulatory bodies were aware of the dust issues that had plagued mining in Costerfield in the late 1990s. They blamed any contamination on an underlying "naturally occurring health issue"... the elevated levels of minerals in the soils of an area renowned for mineral extraction is hardly surprising, they said.
But strangely, it would seem that antimony and gold mining only poses such a "naturally occurring health issue" in Costerfield.
A Naturally Occurring Health Issue All Over The Place
The link between dust and water was noted in our first post on this blog.
Respirable Dust and Evaporative Ponds - A Beginning
(Displaying that ignorance that we have come to expect of Bendigo Councillors, the Chair of the Costerfield Environmental Review Committee, Councillor Helen Leach actually asked "How can you have dust and mud in the same place?" at the November 2014 ERC Meeting.
Seriously!)
And we followed up those observations by noting that the continued and continuing emission of particulate dust was known, accepted and dismissed by previous mining operators in Costerfield and the regulators charged with overseeing the safety, health and well-being of the people of the Costerfield community.
Respirable Dust And The Regulators - Grey Plumes? Oh, That'd Be The Blasting
Over the summer of 2013/14, as Mandalay Resources expanded and developed their latest lucrative ore deposit, dust spewed out of their mine and over the Costerfield residents. The Department of Health was notified in March, but were adamant in their conclusions.
There Is No Dust Coming From The Crusher
Despite the fact that the dust was there for all to see, it wasn't until May that the Department of Health Officer bothered to speak to the people of Costerfield. They were dismissive of any and all suggestions that there may have been any "immediate" health issue whatsoever to address. Residents were advised not to drink water from their rain water tanks, to wash their hands and to keep children away from contaminated soils. Nine properties were so contaminated that children should not reside there. Bottled water would be supplied by the mine to some residents. Only drink bottled water. But the risks were not immediate. That was "semantics" apparently.
But the dust had continued to spew forth. And the rolling fogs from the evaporative misters.
When Things Got Bad I
The Department of Health was supposedly at a loss as to how the contamination of tanks and properties - and people - had spread so far and so unevenly. An officer for the Department, Dr Shaun Greene, fronted an ABC 7.30 Report piece to announce that test results had been compromised by containers holding the samples. He defamed the local doctors who had collected urine samples from concerned residents by putting the responsibility for the use of unsuitable bottles on them. But this was a LIE.
The contamination had come when the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney split the samples prior to testing.
It was left to the Costerfield community to tell these willfully blind regulators that there are
100km/h Winds in Costerfield
And that these winds do not abide by the steady-state conditions assumed in the Department of Health's assessment of conditions. No one had bothered - we presume - to update environmental modelling since the early 1990s - ignorance is just so blissful - and so no one had bothered to apply more advanced dispersal models to the dust emissions in Costerfield. Or to admit to the DoH that they existed.
Rapid Assessment Rapidly Running Out of Puff
It would seem that no one had bothered to examine the impacts of new vents of the mine. Or even the previous use of the Augusta portal to vent dust. New vents had been built in 2013 and 2014 to cope with the mine's expansion into the Cuffley Lode. Huge fans were shifted around underground in order to eliminate dangerous particulates and dust from the mine workers' subterranean environment. And dust was blown around the unconsidered Costerfield environment and population instead.
The dust was supposed to have been "significantly reduced" by the implementation of "dust suppression" initiatives. Part of these initiatives was the purported erection of a roof over the mine's ore crusher. A roof with walls.
But this was also a lie. There was no roof. The regulators allowed Mandalay Resources' then-Sustainability Manager, Mr Andrew Mattiske, to lie to the Bendigo Advertiser. And when that lie was raised at the August ERC Meeting before DSDBI Officer Mr Colin Thornton and - once again - the Chair of the Committee, Councillor Helen Leach, they did nothing to correct it.
Councillor Leach had just been on a tour of the mine site and knew that there was no roof on the crusher. And she said and did nothing.
Mr Thornton was responsible for the work plan variations that govern the installation of a crusher and its roof. And he said and did nothing.
The whole of Bendigo Council said and did nothing - despite vociferous emails from the community, emails sent to each member of Council - pleading to have this LIE corrected and removed from the public record. Council was quite prepared to support the mine's representative in perpetuating untruths that served the purpose of making this mineral extraction project - extraction and processing of heavy metals, Category A Carcinogens and Class 3 Indicators - appear to be nothing more than a benign presence in Costerfield.
They did nothing to correct what they knew to be a LIE.
They did nothing to address this potential threat to the health and well-being of the people of Costerfield.
NOTHING
(Oh, except to comply with the mine's undemocratic banning of two community members from its property and thus the next ERC meeting. So the issue was never revisited...)
It was the Community itself that forced the Advertiser into seeking a retraction of this LIE from Mr Mattiske.
It was the community itself that asked the regulators whether the high levels of antimony contamination of people, places and animals could have been attributed to Costerfield meterological conditions.
Inversion Break-up Fumigation?
Weather conditions have remained a mystery for regulators in Costerfield because it has have never been required that a weather station be installed by the mine. Such a weather station would have provided site-specific evaporative rates, rainfall data and information on which direction the wind was blowing the dust from.
Dust - 17 October 2014
Work Has Commenced At Splitters Creek - Permit Conditions Breached
Reply To Ms White Re Works Commencing At Splitters Creek
Costerfield Dustbowl Blues I
Dust Doesn't Take the Weekend Off
No comments:
Post a Comment
Be civilised and rational... rants and abuse will be moderated out of existence.