Rural communities feeling anxious as NSW government spruiks new mining opportunities

Susannah White and Jade Miskle face an agonising decision about the health of their young children in central western New South Wales.

The two families live either side of a lead, zinc and silver mine that will be built on the edge of the hamlet of Lue, east of Mudgee.

As part of its approval, the community will be offered voluntary blood testing to track their lead levels. 

“If I don’t test my children for lead, am I being a bad mother? And if I do subject a two-year old to the trauma of routine blood testing, am I being a bad mother?” Susannah White said.

“The fact that that is the position we’re put in as a community because someone down the road wants to start a new business is absurd.”

The Bowdens Silver project was approved by the NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC) in April. The commission said the project “can meet all relevant requirements for protecting human health and safety”.

It noted proposed measures include suppressing the site’s dust, monitoring air quality, and keeping dust levels below a prescribed limit.

The IPC accepted submissions from the company and the Department of Planning and Environment that “the intake of any heavy metal … would be almost negligible”.

The mine will be built 2 kilometres from Lue Public School.

Bowdens Silver told 7.30 “the assessment outcomes support the fact” there would be “no adverse impacts” to the school.

“How can a school that’s two kilometres from a mine not be impacted in any way?” Ms Miskle said.

“There’s no way they can stop dust settlement.” 

Bowdens Silver said IPC conditions placed on the mining operations include “monitoring, assessment and trigger action management for potential lead exposure”.

Concerns ‘ignored’

The mothers are part of the Mudgee Region Action Group set up to fight the mine’s development.

Susannah White said the community has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for water, lead and environmental health experts to analyse the mine’s impact.

“At best they were paid lip service in the ultimate approval, and at worst, they’ve been ignored completely,” Ms White said.

The Lue community is concerned the mine’s metals are among those being targeted by the NSW government.

In 2021, the then Coalition government released the NSW Critical Minerals and High-Tech Metals Strategy.

It pitches the state as a global supplier of minerals and metals.

7.30 contacted NSW Planning Minister Paul Scully and Natural Resources Minister Courtney Houssos and asked whether it was fair that mining companies were being offered this type of support and whether it compromised the independence of the planning system.

The ministers declined to be interviewed but in a statement told 7.30: “The government will always do what’s in the best interest of the community on major projects.”

Ms Houssos recently announced plans for a new Critical Minerals Strategy.

The document will be developed through industry consultations and is due to be released in 2024.

In a press release, she confirmed the “renewed strategy will provide certainty and direction for the industry as it continues to grow”.

“I’m excited by the opportunities created by critical minerals in NSW. The new strategy will ensure the state is able to best realise the gains of the next mining boom,” Ms Houssos said.

On Monday, Susannah White told a NSW parliamentary inquiry into heavy metals mining that the current policy makes communities vulnerable. 

“The New South Wales Critical Minerals Strategy is very broad. It casts a wide net and these loose definitions leave space for vested interests to essentially lobby that any mining project that isn’t coal get a ticket to the approvals fast lane,” the inquiry heard. 

“I urge you to see this for what it is – an attempt to skew the weighting of any cost benefit analysis so that the value of what’s coming out of the ground trumps the value of anything else.”

‘Investor ready’

The Bowdens Silver project is also listed on the 2022 NSW Mining Investor Register.

It is among 14 mines the state government is promoting as investment opportunities. 

One of the other projects is the McPhillamys gold mine, which will be built near Blayney in the state’s central west.

Its owner, Regis Resources, received approval from the IPC in March.

Blayney farmer Rebecca Price is part of a community group that is opposed to the mine.

Its tailings dam, which holds mining waste, will be built on the headwaters of the district’s major river, the Belubula.

“On its own merits, this project shouldn’t be able to go ahead in terms of the location of the residents, in terms of the health of the river and what it’s going to do,” Ms Price said.

In 2022, an amendment was made to water legislation to allow the mine to apply for a Special Purpose Access Licence (SPAL) so it could access water reserved for environmental flow to help it proceed. 

“The system is skewed to the proponent getting over the line,” Ms Price said.

“Every time we thought there was a legitimate reason for this assessment to not progress, the department would move the goalposts and allow it to happen.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Regis Resources denied the SPAL provided special treatment for McPhillamys because “SPALs have been granted on other occasions”.

Merits appeal

Under NSW planning laws, a State Significant Project like a mine or major road development must go to the IPC after more than 50 unique public objections are received. 

It is at the discretion of the planning minister as to whether the IPC holds a public hearing or a public meeting.

A public hearing means objectors have no right to appeal a decision based on the merits of the project.

They can only contest the outcome if they believe there has been a legal error. 

The Mudgee Action Group has launched a legal challenge against the Bowdens Silver project’s approval in the Land and Environment Court. 

Greens MLC and former environmental lawyer Sue Higginson said between 2008 and 2016, 29 out of 38 matters that were sent to an IPC public hearing were resource projects.

“What we’ve seen is, over the last period of the Coalition government, a systematic extinguishment of those final appeal rights to the Land and Environment Court,” Ms Higginson said.

Ms Higginson believes the state government has a conflict of interest. 

“We have a government saying on one hand we’re open for business, speaking directly to those interests that will profit enormously from taking up these opportunities, and yet we have communities and our legal processes sidelined,” she said. 

In a statement, a spokesperson for the NSW government said the IPC process did not extinguish all appeal rights.

“The new government will, over time, carefully evaluate whether former government mining strategies remain fit for purpose,” the spokesperson said.

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