The proposal by Regis for the McPhillamys gold mine has been approved. A very disappointing outcome for the Belubula Headwaters Protection Group as well as BCAAN. How might this impact upon Bathurst’s water supply? The full media release from the Belubula Headwaters Protection Group is below.
Media Release: Belubula Headwaters Protection Group
30th March 2023
Approval of McPhillamys Mine Shifts Focus of Community Group The Independent Planning Commission today handed down its decision to approve the long awaited McPhillamys Gold Mine which was first submitted in August of 2019.
The local community are disappointed that the Commissioners discounted their concerns and determined that the issues raised could be adequately mitigated by the proponent, Regis Resources.
President of the Belubula Headwaters Protection Group said, “The community members are only given up to 15 minutes to speak to the Commissioners when Regis Resources had four attempts to adjust their reports, water regulation changes to specifically allow their licenses, years of back door conversations with the DPE and an extended time period to make submissions to the IPC. So it’s not surprising this is the outcome”.
The IPC Hearing was held in early February over three days with most of the presenters speaking in opposition of the proposal. Mr Sutton said “Despite the determination, the community should be proud of their efforts at the IPC hearing and in their written submissions. These are everyday people, retirees, nurses, teachers, farmers, bus and truck drivers raising their case against an ASX listed company which took years to get it to that point and hundreds of thousands of dollars in experts”.
Mr Sutton said “The objectors raised issues including water contamination risk coming from Lithgow, contamination leaving the mine site down the Belubula River, the impact on groundwater aquifers and surface water reduction, risk to local bee keeping enterprises which employ hundreds of people, the impacts on the hundreds of individuals that live within 2km of the site, and many more environmental, amenity, economic and health impacts. It was truly a phenomenal experience to be a part of.”
The proposal claims it will create an average of 260 jobs over the 11 year operational life of the project. When asked about this benefit that will now flow to the community, Mr Sutton stated, “The reality is the unemployment rate in the Central West is under 2%. When economists concede that 3% is effective full employment, it means there’s no one in the area to fill the jobs. Just look at Cadia who have been struggling for over a year now to fill their required roles. Local existing businesses are screaming out for employees and are having to close early or reduce their trading days just to manage with the staff shortages as is. This result will just take away the remaining skilled workers from existing small business and cause more issues.” Mr Sutton went on to explain “If you run the scenario where they bring workers in, which Regis claimed they wouldn’t do in their proposal, they would need housing, and we all know how that’s already going for existing locals looking for housing, do we really want to make this worse?”.
The focus of the group now turns to the finalised conditions issued by the IPC and seeing if the feedback provided by the group was taken on board by the Commissioners. “We’ll be reviewing the final consent conditions in detail and we can already see a few changes in accordance with our requests. Given these will be what governs the operations of the project, we need to ensure we’re across them in detail” Mr Sutton said.
The real work now commences for the Group that has already spent over half a decade dealing with this proposal. Mr Sutton says the effectiveness of these conditions now falls to the group and community to hold Regis accountable. He stated, “Just as it is with Cadia, there will be failures, there will be breaches of conditions. And as we know with Cadia, the EPA do not have resources to enforce these, so it will fall to us to keep the company to account.”
Mr Sutton went on to state, “The biggest shame here is the impacts are irreparable and consequences for breaches are minor at best. Look at the ‘couch change’ fines imposed when Cadia’s Tailing Dam wall collapsed or they breach air quality conditions. The impacts will be unfortunately felt by all of those in Blayney and downstream of the Belubula River, including Carcoar Dam, but the pennies of fines go to the EPA and the company gets to keep operating.”
Regis Resources now turn to finalising their feasibility study and convincing the Board that the project is profitable. There is also still a pending Federal Section 10 application to be determined. In a statement issued by the company, they expect to “Announce further developments late in 2023”. The next Community Consultative Committee Meeting is on Monday and Mr Sutton is encouraging any community members with questions for Regis or the Council, to please send them to belubulaheadwaterspg@gmail.com.