Funds to close mines safely vital for future generations – Sydney Morning Herald

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The Australian economy has benefited greatly from a history extending across more than two centuries of the extraction of valuable minerals and resources from deep within the earth.
Sales of $118 billion worth of iron ore to China, Japan and South Korea in 2021 ranked it the world’s largest exporter of the raw material used to make steel. Likewise, sales of coal worth $113 billion to Japan, China and India last year made a major contribution to the domestic economy.
The Sunny Corner mine closed 100 years ago, but toxic water flows through the site, severely impacting any plants that grow.Credit: Brook Mitchell
But, as environment reporter Laura Chung’s story today highlights, Australia’s record of cleaning up after mining activity is questionable and, on a large scale, largely untested.
Operation of a mine brings with it wealth, jobs and opportunity for the immediate area. With the move towards cleaner energy, the industry is in a phase of transformation with the search for different minerals and rare earth elements. Some mines close as others open.
But with that past and continuing economic bounty comes a further legacy of responsibility once a mine or earth working is decommissioned and closed. With the closure of fossil-fuel mines on the horizon comes the need to restore the land to make it both physically safe and clear of toxic chemicals or pollutants. There is also, however, a responsibility to repurpose the land in an acceptable manner for future use.
Sunny Corner mine between Bathurst and Lithgow, which illustrates the article, was once the largest producer of silver in NSW. Closed some 100 years ago, it is one of about 60,000 abandoned mines nationwide, with some 570 of them in NSW. The water running through the barren landscape looks clean enough to drink but is a toxic cocktail of arsenic, copper, and zinc at concentrations vastly exceeding safe drinking levels.
The historical extraction at Sunny Corner came and went without any need or thought to repatriation. Some $1.2 million has been spent trying to clean up the site but the fear is it may never be completely remediated.
Since the 1980s repatriation demands made upon mining companies have become more onerous and legally enforceable long after closure. Mining companies have also been required to pay a bond to finance the associated work.
With a countryside pockmarked with mines that may be nearing the end of their useful operation, we welcome the comments of NSW Natural Resources Minister Courtney Houssos, who says restrictions on repatriation were further tightened in 2021. She says she is also looking to new alternative uses for redundant sites such as manufacturing and skills hubs. Better there than on virgin green field sites, we would argue.
But there is a further issue that needs to be addressed. In 2017, the bond “kitty” for repatriation stood at $2.2 billion – which, according to the NSW Audit Office, was insufficient contingency given the complexity of and risk involved in closure and rehabilitation of the state’s 450 mines. The kitty stood at $3.5 billion last November.
With increasing pressure to meet Labor’s goal of reducing Australia’s emissions by 43 per cent by 2030, the caution from environmental engineering expert Gavin Mudd that we are in uncharted territory when it comes to the closure of a large modern mine is timely indeed.
When it comes to repatriation, it is clear that not one size fits all. Getting it wrong when it comes to dealing with the large mines of the Hunter Valley is not an option. The potential for repercussions affecting our most vital asset, drinking water, has to be all but eliminated.
Dealing with the unknown somehow never seems to work out cheaper or simpler than anticipated. Ways and means to bolster the repatriation fund by an amount environmental experts consider appropriate to protect future generations must be explored and expedited.
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