A multinational mining company was penalised and told to improve due to multiple safety concerns.
Newcrest Mining was caught repeatedly failing to adequately mitigate dust at its Cadia mine, 28km south of Orange.
The New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (EPA) claims the proponent did not apply enough hydromulch to minimise exposure from the operation’s northern and southern tailings storage facilities. This allegedly let dust spread to nearby residential properties on multiple occasions.
“EPA has received numerous notifications by residents of dust lift events visible from their homes,” EPA regulatory operations director Cate Woods said in a public statement.
“An investigation into resident complaints on 19 April [2022] found the dust had blown from the company’s northern tailings storage facility.”
Investigators discovered mine workers had deposited wet tailings at the north and south facilities before the year 2018. However, this activity stopped after a dam wall separating the two facilities suffered a “catastrophic failure”. This allegedly caused tailings at the facilities to dry out, leading to “dust lift events”.
Newcrest was handed a $15,000 fine, which is the heaviest penalty the authority is able to impose by law.
“Cadia Valley Operations must do better to manage their impacts on the surrounding community if they want to avoid an escalation in regulatory action by the EPA,” Woods said.
The same mine recently reopened less than a month after employees were temporarily evacuated. This precautionary measure was taken due to instability in one of the operation’s vent rises.
“Activities to remediate instability in one of the ventilation rises at Cadia have been completed and underground mining has safely resumed. Cave production has steadily ramped up over recent days, with the mine now returned to full capacity. Development of PC2-3 has also recommenced with critical path activities restored,” the company earlier said.
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