Miffed miner seeks to change minister's mind

Friday 24th August 2001

By Chris Hutching

Mining company GRD Macraes will put new proposals to Conservation Minister Sandra Lee to alleviate her concerns about the environmental effects of its proposed 260ha open-pit goldmine in the Victoria Conservation Park near Reefton.

"We've spent $35 million already. It's a great site, a brilliant goldfield. We're not turning our backs on Reefton," company secretary Angus Kennedy-Perkins said. "We're sure we can offer variations to the scheme that would satisfy the minister's concerns.

"Our initial thoughts are to scale back the processing on-site and go for a more basic crush-grinding system, which is benign, and remove some of the tailings. Ideally, we'd like to meet with the minister to work through the concerns and vary the existing proposals to meet what's required."

GRD already has permits for a smaller 170ha scheme that it obtained in the early 1990s and which it could activate. The mining application turned down by Ms Lee is about double the size of the earlier one. The same number of people would be employed in both schemes but the smaller mine would probably last about seven years instead of 12-15 years for the larger 260ha proposal.

Ms Lee's concerns focused on the risk of collapse of the 275m-deep tailings dam in an earthquake-prone region and subsequent contamination of waterways with arsenic. The host rock for the gold is arsenopyrite, which creates arsenic after contact with water.

Mr Kennedy-Perkins said GRD could make improvements to processing and containment methods.

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