The Queensland government accepted a “bare minimum” rehabilitation plan for a decommissioned coalmine near Ipswich after apparently losing key documents relating to the site’s environmental conditions.
The site of the former Ebenezer mine will remain scarred by massive voids and a waste dam. Rather than fill them – a course of action demanded by environmentalists and local community groups – the owner wants to keep the cratered landscape in the hope of selling the site as a readymade garbage dump.
A void study, a condition of the environmental authority that was required by the end of July 2006, could not be located by the department last year despite an extensive search of its archives, documents obtained under right to information laws reveal.
The site’s owner, Zedemar Holdings, submitted a void study in March this year, almost 12 years after the due date.
By that stage the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection had already signed off on a site rehabilitation assurance plan which required Zedemar to provide a $1.23m bank guarantee equivalent to the cost of planned remediation work.
The decision to approve Zedemar’s plan was made despite other documents going missing, and before any water quality testing had been conducted. An assessment report, seen by Guardian Australia, outlines “non-conformities” and “inconsistencies” with the environmental authority.
Of particular concern to neighbouring residents is that the $1.23m bond does not factor in any work to rehabilitate a tailings dam – a 31 hectare pond used to store mining waste, and which was designed to spill over into a nearby creek.
The dam will be fenced but otherwise left in situ and dedicated as a “fauna habitat”. The rehabilitation of comparable tailings water storage typically involves removing the waste product, capping the dam and revegetating the area.
Why are there so many problems?
The mining boom has pock-marked our landscape. These voids created by miners are only rarely properly filled and rehabilitated.
Many of the environmental conditions imposed on mining operations, especially those dating back decades, failed to envisage an increasingly common scenario in the industry: major miners selling projects at the end of their lifespan, offloading the rehabilitation liability to junior players or speculators, who buy at peppercorn prices.
A significant concern for authorities in these cases can be pushing site owners to commit more than they are willing to pay.
If rehabilitation becomes more costly than the site is worth, there is a risk companies will wind themselves up, abandon the site and leave the government to pick up the cost of remediation.
A 2014 Queensland audit office report found the state had been “exposed to liability” because of ineffective supervision, monitoring and enforcement of environmental conditions.
The Queensland government has tabled new laws, yet to be passed by parliament, to create a new government-managed fund for mine rehabilitation, and to require miners to repair their land progressively, while projects are still operational.
In the documents seen by Guardian Australia, the department describes uncertainty about whether the proposal to allow the tailings dam to remain as a fauna habitat was allowable under the initial environmental authority. The department, in April 2017, eventually ruled that it was, despite not being able to find clarifying documents.
“Documentation to provide context to the administering authority’s decision regarding the tailings dam has not been located to date,” the department said in its 2017 assessment report. “Currently the Ipswich compliance office is conducting a search of the Brisbane archive folders to locate further information.”
The Japanese miner Idemetsu owned the Ebenezer mine until 2003, when it ceased operations. The site was bought that year by the Brisbane-based Zedemar Holdings, which tried several times to sell the site to mining interests.
Unable to sell, Zedemar is handing back its environmental authority to mine, a process that will take until 2022 and requires the site’s rehabilitation.
Environmental groups say the situation at the Ebenezer mine looms as a stern test of whether new regulations will be able to force better outcomes.
A Lock the Gate spokesman, Rick Humphries, said in a letter to the department: “There has been no serious attempt by the department nor Zedemar to seriously identify the environmental and public health and safety risk and their mitigation.”
Humphries said the plan agreed to by the department simply locked in the existing landform at the site and was a “bare minimum approach”.
A Zedemar director, Rob Mathieson, said the company had abandoned plans to continue coalmining but wanted to leave mining voids to allow the site to be sold to a landfill company.
“The mine started in 1986 and over a period of time there have been final landform plans done and the department has signed off on each of those final landforms,” he said. “And currently our environmental authority doesn’t require us to fill in the tailings dam. The plan requires us to leave it as a nature habitat.”
Mathieson said Lock the Gate had spread misinformation about acid water at the site. He said water had been tested and was “between 6 and 9 pH”.
“They’ve never been to the site … they’ve flown a drone over the site which is meaningless. The results of our rehabilitation are excellent.”
Locals are concerned by what they say is an increasing trend: landfill companies using decommissioned coalmining sites at Ipswich, a city built largely around a once-thriving coal industry, as dumps.
George Hatchman, the president of the Willowbank area residents’ group, said Ipswich would not be a target of landfill companies if mines were properly rehabilitated.
“When you go into these coalmining leases and you give your objections, they give you a rosy picture,” Hatchman said. “‘In 30 years’ time the coalmine will be gone and you’ll have rolling hills.’
“Now they want to fill them with garbage. That’s not a fair cop.”
Hatchman said the mine had an obligation to consult with the local community.
The Rosewood District Protection Organisation has similar concerns. The group’s technical adviser, Col Thompson, said the site was on a floodplain and “a lot of underground water moves through that area”.
The Queensland department of environment said it carried out a compliance inspection at the Ebenezer mine on 28 March.
“The department is currently assessing the outcomes of that inspection and is in discussions with the EA holder regarding agreed closure and rehabilitation plan requirements.”
