Lightning Ridge farmers call for more protection against opal mining
August 12, 2004
Farmers are demanding a halt to the continued environmental degradation of their land by opal mining and have called for a more concerted effort to rehabilitate it.
The NSW leader of the Australian Democrats Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans and Greens MP Lee Rhiannon met with farmers near Cumborah last week to discuss concerns about the impact opal mining has on the land and the proposed opening of Opal Prospecting Area 4.
Farmers are angry at the seemingly unlimited access miners have to their land and the lack of any major effort to fully rehabilitate it.
Farmer Leon Cravino said not one field had been rehabilitated and returned to its owner in 100 years, although the landowner was still required to pay leases and maintain it.
He said before any new area was opened up for prospecting a proper management plan and an Environmental Impact Statement should be developed to fully understand the affect it would have on the land.
"We need to apply the guidelines that are necessary to avoid a repetition of the environmental destruction of the kind we have seen.
"We need an EIS so we understand the long-term affects of what's happening, we need a management plan with teeth, instead of a management plan in name only," he said.
Mr Cravino said one of the features of opening up OPA 4 was the proposed changes to the Mining Act which would increase a miner's access to a property for prospecting from 14 to 28 days.
"The biggest problem of this is the creation of a myriad unnecessary tracks that go all over the place. In doing this they destroy the surface of our land... they can drive all over your property. This could be a convoy of six or seven vehicles for 28 days. It's most undesirable."
Mr Cravino also said miners should fully exhaust land already open to them before looking for new areas.
"The opal miners say is they need more land for prospecting because they are fast running out, but we say there is a tonne of land still available, still unprospected in areas one, two and three. Mulga Rush was available for prospecting for 60 to 70 years.
"They have never discovered it because nobody had properly and systematically prospected it.
"What we're saying is there ought to be a systematic exploration or prospecting... if they diligently and conscientiously mine they could exhaust it in five years. Then we have another two years to rehabilitate.
Source: The Ridge News