PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Australian Environment Minister Tony Burke on Wednesday approved Rio Tinto’s South of Embley bauxite mine, in Queensland, but imposed 76 conditions on the $1-billion, western Cape York Peninsula-based project, to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

The original referral decision was revoked in March last year, to assess previously unidentified shipping movements through the Great Barrier Reef. Rio subsequently submitted an amended environmental-impact study, which concluded mitigation measures would be sufficient to limit residual impacts from the project, which includes a new mine and port.

“The inclusion of the shipping impacts on the Great Barrier Reef in the revised referral has meant that Rio Tinto Alcan provided a fundamentally more comprehensive environmental-impact statement, which addressed all the key environmental impacts on matters of national environmental significance,” Burke said on Wednesday.

“The conditions I have imposed will ensure that shipping activity arising from this project does not negatively impact the outstanding universal value of the Great Barrier Reef, and meets the highest international standards in its planning, regulation, assessment and operation.”

The Minister noted that Rio, through its subsidiary RTA Weipa, was required to work to an agreed marine and shipping management plan, a temporary barge plan, a dredging management plan and a terrestrial management plan to ensure the safety of species and flora in the region.

He said that these plans were critical to ensuring the health of the surrounding environment and to minimising any adverse effects from dredging. The company was also required to implement a strategy over the life of the project-approval phase, to reduce feral pig predation on listed turtle species' nests.

“In addition, my conditions require funding of up to A$1.2-million for an Inshore Dolphin Offset Strategy to inform our knowledge of the listed migratory species, the Australian snubfin dolphin and the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin in the Western Cape York region,” Burke said.

Despite Burke’s reassurance around environmental safety, the Wilderness Society warned that the mine would wipe out some 30 000 ha of landscape which was recently identified as being of World Heritage standard.

“Minister Burke has today given the green light to landscape destruction, land only just formally recognised for its World Heritage-standard values,” said Queensland campaign manager Dr Tim Seelig.

“This mine will result in environmental vandalism on a grand scale.”

Seelig further warned the new mine would result in some 900 shipping movements through the Great Barrier Reef.

The South of Embley project, which would extend the life of the Weipa mine by some 40 years, involved the staged increase in bauxite production up to a possible 50-million tons a year and would include the construction of new mining areas, infrastructure, a power station, warehouses, barge and ferry facilities, ship-loading facilities and an access road.

Production and shipping of first bauxite from the project was expected to start in 2016.