The Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation says the damage to the Mirarr people's traditional land by the Ranger uranium mine has been significant.

The Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation says the damage to the Mirarr people's traditional land by the Ranger uranium mine has been significant.

The Mirarr people in the Northern Territory's Kakadu region have been re-negotiating a land use agreement with mine owners, Rio Tinto subsidiary Energy Resources of Australia, for the past 13 years.

GAC Executive Officer Justin O'Brien says the 30-year-old mine has caused a number of environmental problems in the Kakadu.

Justin O'Brien:

[The mine] has distrupted, and indeed destroyed, a significant part of the Mirarr people's traditional estate and has had impacts outside that immediately disturbed area. We're talking about some very, very large rock piles, some massive open-cut pits - there are two of them. One is now filled with contaminated water, it's radioactively-contaminated water, and the other pit is current, it's the operational pit. These are very large pits, these are almost a kilometre wide.

GAC also say it's time Rio Tinto finalized a re-negotiated land use agreement for the mine.

Mr O'Brien says while he welcomes a recent decision by Energy Resources of Australia to scrap plans to build an acid heal leaching plant, the miner needs to go further.

Mr O'Brien says new deal should include a social license to operate.

Justin O'Brien:

We now think that it is time for the mining company to seriously come to the table about concluding the re-negotiation of the Ranger mine agreement. It's not widely know that 33 years ago, the Australian Government imposed an agreement on the Mirarr people, so it wasn't a great deal. We're still operating off that 1978 deal. We just feel that it's time for the mining company to come to the table, in good faith, and speedily conclude these talks.