The issues raised in Mr Gavin Mudd's provocative letter "Groundwater issues in South Australia" as published in the September, 1998 IAH Newsletter would have been of serious concern if they had been an accurate reflection of the facts. He inaccurately states that acid leach mining is banned in the USA. This is certainly not the case. Acid leach mining for copper is currently under testing and development at the Florence copper project in Arizona. Acid leach mining for uranium has been trialed in the USA without proceeding to commercial development for a variety of reasons including that most American ISL targets have high levels of carbonate minerals. These consume acid and render acid leaching less effective and more expensive than alkaline leach. It is insulting to:
Mt Mudd mischievously refers to increased radionuclide and heavy metal levels that will occur within the aquifer during mining, without finishing the sentence. Once mining ceases, these levels will drop to below levels recorded in the aquifer before the current field leach trials began. He also claims there are unresolved questions concerning the isolated nature of the aquifer to be mined. However, the ore zone aquifer is clearly isolated laterally by plastic clays and mudstones above and below and horizontally as evidenced by the results of pump tests, which demonstrate the influence of side and end boundaries. Contrary to his personal views, the possibility of the surrounding aquifers being contaminated is extremely remote. Notwithstanding this, the aquifers will be subject to close monitoring programs, designed and implemented in close collaboration with the various regulatory authorities. As for Mr Mudd's "paraphrasing" of comments made at the public meeting held as part of the Environmental Impact Statement process, his reporting of events is as fuzzy as his understanding of the ISL process. Indeed, since he did not attend the meeting it is difficult to see how he can properly paraphrase anything that was said other than third party reports delivered to him. There is no doubt in my mind that the "concerned member of the public" he was referred to was an anti-nuclear activist who was intent on embarassing the proponent. After asking a question very similar to several others asked earlier in the evening, the gentleman in question was not told "you're the general public, you don't understand groundwater." The statement made was (correctly paraphrased) "you do not want to understand." For Mr Mudd to wax lyrical about the "professional integrity of the study of hydrogeology" against the background of his own misrepresentation of a wide range of facts and his total miscomprehension of the ISL process is quite breathtaking. Professional integrity in any field requires objectivity, factual accuracy and honesty. When sections of the general community have their genuine concerns heightened by:
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