A Rehabilitated Pit? Not At All, Ms Mansfield

We have previously shown communication from Ms Prue Mansfield, Planning & Development Director of City of Greater Bendigo, regarding the spraying of water on the South Costerfield-Graytown Road. She refers to the source of the water as a "rehabilitated pit". To be blended with RO water supposedly. At what ratio?

We have discussed the use of water from the Brunswick Tailings storage facility here, it comprises the Brunswick Pit and the Brunswick Dam (a tailings storage facility that has NOT been rehabilitated but has been collecting storm water for ten years). Neither of these bodies of waste material have been rehabilitated.

The unrehabilitated nature of the Brunswick TSF is confirmed in the ERC minutes of November 2014  which read on page 4:

"Dust suppression at Splitters Creek has used storm water from Brunswick tailings dam."

But Ms Mansfield knew this already.

On 30 July 2014 an Ordinary Meeting of Council was held. On the agenda (17.1MB pdf!) was a discussion of the expansion of the Brunswick Tailings Storage Facility:



3.3 1091 (CA 37 SEC 1) Heathcote-Nagambie Road, and (CA16 SEC 6) Bradleys Lane, Costerfield - Open Cut Mining on Brunswick Mine Site (Brunswick Tailings Storage Facility)

Author Bryce Kilian, Statutory Planner
Responsible Prue Mansfield, Director Planning & Development Director.

At section 3.3 we find the following:

So the "rehabilitated pit" that Ms Mansfield refers to is - as she should well know, being "responsible" for the agenda's contents at 3.3 - actually part of a decommissioned tailings storage facility (TSF) and is a dam that is "full of old tailings" and has not been rehabilitated at all. 

Again... The facility does not contain a "rehabilitated pit".

A rehabilitated pit or TSF has had this done to it:

And in the best of all possible worlds ends up looking something like a Teletubby house:

This is an aerial photo of the Brunswick Tailings Storage Facility, the Brunswick Tailings Dam comprises the bodies of water on the lower right. Look at the separate compartments. It is not a rehabilitated anything. What's that floating around in there? And the Brunswick Pit is similarly open to the elements.

The Brunswick Tailings Storage Facility does not contain a rehabilitated pit. The Brunswick Dam is not a rehabilitated pit. 


There are no rehabilitated TSFs in the state of Victoria.

A legal argument that poses their "use" against their "usefulness" means that they will, in effect, remain open in perpetuity.

Ms Mansfield was "responsible" in July for describing the source of water used for dust suppression as "this TSF" and as "pre-existing and decommissioned although it is full of old tailings". This TSF.

FULL of them.

Council has approved the spraying of tailings contaminated water from a Tailings Storage Facility for dust suppression along the South Costerfield-Graytown Road and Ms Mansfield has misinformed the concerned residents who spoke up.