PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Gold miner St Barbara has called on the Solomon Island government to act quickly in order to avoid an overflow of the tailings storage facility at the Gold Ridge mine.

Operations at the Gold Ridge mine were suspended in April this year, owing to torrential rainfall and ensuing flooding. To date, St Barbara has been unable to resume production from the mine site owing to a number of reasons, including the presence of illegal miners at the site and infrastructure damage.

Since suspending operations, St Barbara has been preparing the processing plant for care and maintenance, while also repairing the water treatment plant and pumping stations for the tailing storage facility.

However, the gold miner told shareholders that the company had been unable to obtain approval from the Solomon Island government to undertake a controlled release of water from the tailings storage facility by pumping directly into the Tinahulu river.

Vandals destroyed the water treatment plant at the Gold Ridge operations for a second time this year in August, and the gold miner has recommended that the government approve a controlled release of untreated water into the Tinahulu river.

The release of water was now becoming an urgent matter with the onset of the wet season, to prevent water overflowing the spillway, the miner said.

The company said that it had submitted a dewatering plan for approval, and had been in discussions with the Solomon Island government since the start of September, but to date, the government has not taken steps to approve the dewatering plan or to conduct community consultation.

As a result, St Barbara has itself issued local advertisements and posted warnings to local communities around the risk of the water overflow from the tailings storage facility during the wet season.

The company warned that without intervention in the short term, uncontrolled water releases from the tailings storage facility would occur, which could erode the spillway and lead to further overflow with potentially serious environmental consequences and possible damage to life and property if an extreme rainfall event were to occur.