The map that shows Plibersek is wrong on sites for $1bn mine’s tailing dam

A map showing the reach of Tanya Plibersek’s contested Aboriginal heritage order at the Blayney gold mine has quashed assurances that there are a plethora of other options to progress the project.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek. Picture: Keryn Stevens

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A map showing the reach of Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s contested Aboriginal heritage order at the Blayney gold mine has quashed assurances that there are a plethora of other options for Regis Resources to progress the $1bn project.

The map shows Ms Plibersek’s late intervention in Regis Resources’ gold mine in central west NSW last month has wiped out three of the mine’s four tailings dam site options from its feasibility study.

The fourth site – the only one remaining from the years-long approvals and assessment process – was abandoned early because it rated worst for environmental damage. It is closest to homes and would draw the most water from the Belubula River, according to a 600-page feasibility study.

After the mine was approved by the NSW Independent Planning Commission and Ms Plibersek’s own department, Ms Plibersek used the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act to create a no go zone in the middle of the project. This no go zone blankets the approved tailings dam site.

“Crucially, my decision is not to stop the mine,” Ms Plibersek said when she announced her decision last month. “The company has indicated to me that it has assessed around four sites and 30 potential options for the tailings dam.”

The Weekend Australian has confirmed the “30 options” that Ms Plibersek referred to in her statement are all on the four known sites. They are slightly angled variations of each of the four options from the feasibility study with essentially the same four footprints.

Ms Plibersek made the protection order on the advice of a small dissident group called the Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation, saying: “Once this river is destroyed, it’s destroyed forever.”

The decision has enraged the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council, which has cultural ­authority for the area under NSW law and claims Ms Plibersek has been taken in by baseless claims about the area’s cultural significance. The Orange land council reached a neutral position on the mine after conducting its own ­surveys.

The area of cultural significance, where Belubula River intersects with Dungeon Road. Picture: Rohan Kelly

While the protected area covers the preferred tailings dam site, it also encroaches into a second possible tailings dam site assessed in the feasibility study.

A third possible tailings dam site has only a sliver of the protected area within its boundary but it also has a registered Aboriginal burial ground in the middle of it.

This was registered in 2020 after Regis made it known it was assessing tailings dam options there.

Key mine opponent Lisa Paton, a director of the Wiradyuri corporation who once worked for the Orange land council, registered the burial site with NSW Environment and Heritage based on a 1912 newspaper article saying a farmer found a partial skeleton while sinking a fence post near Dungeon Road.

The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate reported that a local policeman judged the skull to be Aboriginal “by the thickness of the skull”.

Regis understands that Ms Plibersek did not explicitly protect the burial ground in her declaration against the chosen tailings dam site last month because it was not under imminent threat. That is, it was not on the chosen tailings dam site.

A map showing possible tailings sites.

However, she described the burial ground as having particular significance to Aboriginal people in an explanatory statement to ­parliament and Regis has advice that she would act if the company proposed a tailings dam there.

Ms Plibersek’s office did not answer The Weekend Australian’s question about whether Ms Plibersek would allow Regis to build a tailings dam over the Aboriginal burial ground.

When a reporter asked Ms Plibersek at a media event this week about the viability of other options for Regis’s tailings dam, she said: “I’m not going to try and design their tailings dam in a press conference.

“This is a large company. They’ve got geologists and hydrologists and engineers available to them.

“If there’s $7 billion worth of gold in the ground, as they have suggested, it’s probably in their interests to put a bit of time and energy into looking at alternatives.

“But it’s up to them. It’s their project.”

Regis is now contemplating the merits of restarting an approvals process for the only remaining tailings dam option from its feasibility study, a fourth site outside the project area.

That land is held privately and not owned by Regis.

The feasibility study gave the other three sites ratings of between 3.5 and 3.8 out of a possible five points, five being the best. The fourth site received a score of 2.5.

The study found that building the tailings dam at the fourth site would result in the loss of 1300ha of catchment area from the Belubula River.

The other sites would result in the loss of between 200ha and 440ha of catchment area each.

The first three sites assessed in the feasibility study would have diverted low to medium amounts of clean water from the river while the fourth site would divert a high amount of clean water from the river, the feasibility study found.