PERTH (miningweekly.com) – A new report by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has warned that up to 22 sacred Indigenous sites and an important river system in the Northern Territory face irreversible cultural and ecological damage if operations at diversified miner Glencore’s McArthur River zinc mine continue unabated.

Northern Territory Minister of Mining and Industry Nicole Manison in November last year approved Glencore’s amended mining management plan for its zinc mine that allowed mining activities to continue.

The McArthur River mine has been operating since 1995 and is one of the world’s largest zinc resources.

The mining management plan 2020 outlined the mine’s sustainable ongoing resource development in the territory in a way which the company said would minimise environmental impacts and ensure long-term beneficial land uses after closure.

However, the UNSW’s Global Water Institute and the Environmental Centre of the Northern Territory (ECNT) said this week that short-term problems such as the spontaneous combustion of waste rock, which has been ongoing at the mine since 2014, would pale in comparison to the long-term risks of metallic and acid contamination of the groundwater system and the McArthur river.

Worse, even after such risks were identified by the Independent Monitor, the report identified repeated failures of the mine site operator, Glencore Australia, and the Northern Territory mining regulator to act quickly to mitigate the identified risks.

UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Associate Professor Fiona Johnson, one of the report’s contributors, said it is especially disheartening that the Northern Territory government recently approved a further expansion of the McArthur River mine.

“It’s hard to understand why the McArthur River mine has been given the green light to expand its operations when it is still yet to prove itself capable in dealing with problems arising from its current mining practices,” she said.

Some of these problems identified in the report include: acid build-up in waste rock that was misclassified as harmless; seepage from a tailings dam into groundwater and nearby creeks; and risks to sacred sites.

The report authors point to the extended delays between the Independent Monitor reporting of issues and the mine taking actions to address them, as exacerbating the problems.

Johnson said that there are year-long gaps between one report and the next, and then further delays as the mine considers its response to the issues raised. That the last two years of reporting have still not been released is a case in point.

“Looking at the example of the misclassified waste rock, that lag of 12 years between the problem being identified and the proposed solution being approved shows that the Independent Monitor does not have sufficient power to improve the environmental outcomes at the mine quickly enough,” Johnson said.

“This pattern of delayed reporting and delayed response needs to be overhauled.”

The report noted that in addition to expediting the monitoring process, much more should be done to ensure ongoing and meaningful engagement with communities in Borroloola and surrounding districts in future reporting from the Independent Monitor.

“It is essential that the independent monitoring process be conducted in a timely fashion, in ways that are informed by a more systematic engagement with community concerns and priorities,” the report concluded.