Tuesday, 23 January, 2007

by Adrienne Francis
ABC Country Hour

A land owner in Batchelor says neighbours should be concerned about the impact of a new mine in the region.

Compass Resources is expected to open the Browns Oxide Project by July, which will yield copper, cobalt and nickel.

Richard Luxton owns the nearby Coomalie Farm, 14km north east of Batchelor. He says previous mines in the region have proven over many decades that even the best intentions often fall short. His farm is closest to the old Woodcutters zinc, silver and lead mine, which closed around seven years ago.

"The Woodcutters experience for local people was initially one of supporting the development of the mine, but the reality of it was that it became known of as the most dangerous mine in the country. They left an environmental legacy that is going to be of concern to residents in the areas for a long time to come from the possible contamination of the underground water supplies that Batchelor relies on."

"During early development of the mine they were de-watering something like 300,000 tonnes a day of water and that was flowing down through the creek system. During the life of the mine, the company did controlled releases from their tailings dams down through the creek system and they never let us know when the flushes were coming down and we had to shut down a market garden using water from Coomalie Creek."

"In light of all that, how is a relatively junior miner, Compass Resources, going to cope? Governments are having a lesser involvement in monitoring. Things don't auger well if the Compass Project goes into large scale uranium mining which will effectively swallow up all of the existing Rum Jungle mine."

"Compass have really got to show with this first Browns Oxide Project that they are genuine in wanting to go out and engage with their neighbours. People who are farming in that area have found that their main involvement with the company has been a very genuine fear that their water supplies are going to dry up with Compass'ss de-watering. Their future is starting to look a little bit bleak."

The former Woodcutters mine takes its name from the timber cutters track which supplied construction of the railway line. The mine operated from 1986 - 1999 and has been owned by Nicron Resources, the Normandy Poseidon Group and finally Newmont Mining.