3CR
 Community Radio 855am

THE RADIO-ACTIVE SHOW

With Eric Miller and Linda Marks

Saturday at 10.00am

23rd January 1999

Good morning, this is the Radio Active Show brought to you by the Sustainable Energy and Anti-Uranium Service. I'm Linda Marks and with me in the studio is Eric Miller. (Good Morning) The Radio Active Show is a weekly program bringing you news and information on Nuclear, Peace and Energy issues.

On today's show we revisit the Beverley Uranium project in Northern South Australia.

The Beverley Uranium project started as a pilot plant a year ago. It is situated in the Lake Frome area in Northern South Australia, near the Gammon Ranges, which are in the northern part of the Flinders Ranges. The plant uses sulphuric acid in situ leaching to extract the uranium. Sulphuric acid is pumped down a bore into the ore body, and the dissolved uranium is pumped out through an adjacent bore. The process the Government has gone through to get this mine up and running is a good or bad case study, according to your point of view, for other uranium projects around the country. The project has been fast tracked with the government keeping everything as secret as possible. Here is David Noonan, campaign officer for the Australian Conservation Foundation in Adelaide speaking at the Nuclear Free Australia Forum late last year.

David Noonan: In the early '80s, the Australian community rejected the Beverley and Honeymoon proposals in South Australia. They were prevented by the then national focus against the uranium industry. We are now in the situation where Beverley is again to set precedents and Beverley will set precedents, not only for Beverley and Honeymoon in South Australia but for a number of in situ uranium mine proposals, especially in WA and around the Lake Frome area in South Australia.

There are serious concerns with the process and the manipulations and the corruption of the process that's been used by the Government and the company to get away with the fast tracking of uranium mines in Australia. Beverley makes a very good example and exposes what we can expect we'll have to contend with in many of the explorations and the mining ventures that will come up in the future.

The EIS designation for Beverley was not a public event. The conservation movement found out about it much later, long after the negotiated arrangements between Government and the company, the company being General Atomics of the USA, a major US nuclear corporation, acting through a 100% Australian owned subsidiary, Heathgate Resources.

There was a transfer of responsibilities from the Commonwealth to the State. Uranium approvals are fundamentally a matter of Commonwealth jurisdiction and Beverley required a Commonwealth ordered Environmental Impact Statement yet the South Australia Government became the lead agency in preparation of that EIS and of the management of the mine preparations. Not only were they in charge of the EIS, they were also then transferred within South Australian legislation. They transferred jurisdiction, not to the Development Act that's supposed to manage major events and matters of environmental significance, but they transferred the construction of a uranium mine, merely to the regulations under the Mining Act. They used arrangements that were not public, that didn't require any public participation, that didn't require any public release of documentation and where there were no set standards by which one could judge or contend or contest the construction of the mine. It is astounding that the guidelines, that the instructions that the company is to comply with, and one of the few documents that one can then draw the Government and the company to account for, the EIS guidelines, are virtually useless in any of these respects.

The EIS guidelines did not address the actual construction of the mine that was happening at the same time as the guidelines were being written. The mine actually started to produce uranium on the 2nd January this year (1998) prior to the release of the guidelines for the EIS preparation. From May 1997 the ACF were in public conflict with the South Australian Government over the Beverley proposal and from the very start the then Minister, Baker, for mines was refusing to give public access to documentation on the basis of commercial confidentiality. They were using legislative arrangements that had no requirement for public involvement. They were preventing, for instance, uses of the Freedom of Information Act in contesting and the delaying uses of that Act at the State and Commonwealth level, on the basis of commercial confidentiality and in the commercial and resource interest of the company involved.

The Government was giving false assurances about ground water rehabilitation and the onus was on the conservation groups to build a case for an informed public debate about this new industry, this new technological application, and further expansion of uranium mining in South Australia and precedents it would set. Not only just precedents for uranium mining but precedents for general mining standards in general right across the board in that, in South Australia one is no longer required, from these examples, to rehabilitate ground water after the impacts of a mining venture.

A trial mine was designed and constructed by the company prior to them applying to the South Australian Government for approval to operate the trial mine. After construction of the mine they then submitted what was called a declaration of environmental factors under the regulations of the mining act for State Government approval. The company had determined all the parameters for that design and its operations and the Government ticked off on them. The Government refused to release any of the relevant documentation or correspondence or to comply with any Freedom of Information requests until after they had given their approval for the operation of the trial mine. They have a fundamental approach of pre-empting due process, to attempt to put the company's interest, to establish the company's interest, and to have these events as a fait accompli to prevent what is then the public reaction against them.

Linda Marks: We are listening to David Noonan, campaign officer for ACF in Adelaide speaking at the Nuclear Free Australia Forum in Melbourne late last year. In South Australia there has been a uranium mine operating for over 10 years and the people of South Australia are continually being told that it is of great economic benefit to the State. The Roxby mine is the largest uranium deposit in the world. Back to David:

David Noonan: In South Australia it's exceptionally difficult to oppose a new uranium venture because of the institutionalised ways of doing things that have resulted because of the influence of Western Mining over Roxby Downs. This is through legislation and administration arrangements and in party politics of both Labor and Liberal, there is virtually no distinction between Labor and Liberal in their support for Western Mining. An example of that is that uranium mining in South Australia is exempt from the jurisdiction of the Environment Protection Authority and from all of its relevant legislation. So, while in South Australia we do have modern legislation in regard to environmental protection, and the public have some faith in that legislation and the role of the EPA, none of that applies to uranium mining.

The actual most strategic licence given to the Beverley trial mine was from the South Australian Health Commission. The administrative arrangements under which that licence was designed were to do with occupational health and safety, yet it was used in a manner that was giving approval to uranium mining and milling, ISL being the chemical equivalent of milling. While the Government was refusing public access to information on the basis of commercial confidentiality, it ordered that the Health Commission would give the licence for the Beverley trial and it would be a non-commercial licence. It was given to the company for $200 rather than the commercial licence fee of $100,000. So, the level of manipulation goes through every possible event and favour that can be given to the company's interests.

Having access to documentation, or some extent of the documentation, ACF and the conservation movement were then in a position to run a public exposé on the standards that had really been applied up to that point. And at the start of this year we were in a position to release information that showed the Government had approved the release of all of the liquid wastes from the mine including uranium in solution, other radio nucleides, heavy metals and sulphuric acid back into the Beverley aquifer. They were to dispose of all of their liquid wastes out sight, out of mind, into a ground water system that the company couldn't validate the kind of activity and the risks from that aquifer to other aquifers.

The minister of that time was taking an extreme apologist role and contrary to the earlier guarantees and assurances for ground water protection they were now saying that they would guarantee to protect good aquifers. Now, a good aquifer is one that has a current economic use. If you've evolved over time to have an application in our society then South Australian Ministerial approval might be given to your protection. But if you are an aquifer such as the Beverley aquifer, that is under the interests of a uranium mining venture, then you are likely to be treated very harshly and to have all of one's liquid wastes discharged in your area.

They were defining pollution as an event relevant to other current economic applications of the site, they were not accepting that the Australian environment whether it be ground water system or surface contamination involved has inherent value. The company was attempting to limit its responsibilities geographically to say to the artificial boundaries of its retention lease. The retention lease is a legal mechanism that has existed from the early 80s from previous companies that had an interest in the area passing on that interest. It's not a production licence, they don't have a mining lease or a mining licence as yet.

The company doesn't know the geographic course of the Beverley aquifer off their retention lease, yet they were giving assurances that the aquifer was separate from all other water bodies in the long term. They have only done some limited on site studies in any scientific sense to attempt to validate the Government's and the company's assurances that this aquifer is perpetually separate from any other aquifer and there is no risk from contamination from one to another.

On a human rights aspect the treatment by the Government and the company of the Traditional Owners is particularly appalling. The 'so called' consultation with the indigenous community basically involved deliberate division and deliberate coercion. This was to the point where the State police forcibly removed representatives of the Adnyamathanha Community from a public meeting. This was at the direction of a member of the South Australian Parliament and at the direction of officers of the company, General Atomics who were on the stage attempting to control the debate and the meeting. The use of private agreements where individuals and very small groups are set up to, in theory, represent the broader community, the Traditional Owners of the area. And those individuals and small groups sign agreements on behalf of the broad community, but those agreements are then not released to the community because they are told that they are confidential again. And the Government and the company go into the public realm and say that we've now signed with the community, we have this on paper. But they don't acknowledge that the broad community does not support the agreement. They don't acknowledge that those arrangements were never public and that some of them were paid.

The Native Title arrangements in SA were dealt through a notice to negotiate process. South Australia is in the unique situation where it has had from early on its own Native Title Act and it has quite detailed arrangements in which Native Title is to be addressed in South Australia. That notice to negotiate under legal threats and the process that went with that, meant that there were some months of forced consultation, forced negotiations with the Traditional Owners, yet this was nearly all prior to release of the draft EIS. So the company was going to the Traditional Owners and saying, we want you to sign off on your Aboriginal heritage, your traditional ownership and interest in these areas, and concur with our uranium mining venture. This was prior to them being able to see any detailed documentation of where the mining venture was and what it actually entailed.

So where the broad Australian community has the right under an EIS process to an 8 week public consultation period, the Adnyamathanha Community were, for the first two weeks of that period, under court action by the company if they didn't concur and sign mining agreements with them.

The Government has seriously down played the role of the Aboriginal Heritage Act and they have disenfranchised the broad community and refused to deal with them and they have only dealt with a small number of people. The major group that represents the community there in terms of Native Title is called ANTMC, the Native Title Adnyamathanha Management Committee. One of their representatives went on Channel 2 after having been coerced into signing the agreement saying that in fact they had been forced into signing it. That community now feel that they've lost much of their power in the issue and that the public pressure and the potential of adverse media is precluding them from further protecting their Aboriginal heritage.

Further access to people in the know and to some documentation meant that early in the EIS period, the ACF were able to go to a public meeting hosted by the South Australian Government. We released information about a radioactive spill that had occurred at the mine some 5 months earlier that had not been reported by the company or by the Government. It had not been acknowledged at the time, the Traditional Owners were not told about it. As the company negotiated the impacts of the mine with them and was telling them we're from the US and this is best practise and we will do things in the manner that does not damage your environment. They were at the same time cordoning off the radioactive spill site and not letting the traditional owners know. They didn't report any of that information in the draft EIS. They did not acknowledge that event in the public meetings that the Government and the company held to inform the public of the potential environmental impacts of the mine and they only acknowledged it under extreme pressure of forceful questioning. The company had not cleaned up the site at the time, they had merely cordoned it off. The only difference between the standards being applied in South Australia for in situ leach and the standards that were applied in the old

Soviet Union is that the white tape that is used to mark off contaminated areas in South Australia is a bit brighter than what it is in Kazakhstan.

The draft EIS for Beverley, written by the proponent as is the norm in South Australian legislation, failed to report on the operations of the trial mine. Yet the Government and company had rationalised the need to construct and operate a trial mine to gather information that was supposedly required to produce EIS documentation. The Commonwealth Government equally picked up on the lack of reporting on the trial mine and its impacts and of the base line information that one would require access to in order to correctly judge the impacts of the broader commercial venture.

It did not present any intended plan for the rehabilitation of the ground water at the site and it did not present any alternative for the management of all of the liquid waste from the site other than the discharge of those wastes into ground water. That's a fundamental breach of the EIS process where they are required to present alternatives to the major aspects of the proposal.

Again the conservation movement had to lead the informed public debate and the submissions to the EIS really expose what the public felt about the whole issue. There were 10 submissions from the Government and you could say that in general they supported the mine venture, particularly the submission from the Bureau of Rural Resources of the DPIE. It went to the point of actually writing text in support of the proponent and explaining away the impacts of the mine and offering this text for the proponent to use in the public realm, that was their submission and analysis. There were 2 submissions that supported the mine and there were some 1158 submissions that opposed the mine.

The Government then went ahead and attacked those submissions and the contents of the submissions and the public's right to send in submissions. They attacked the use of somewhat extensive and quite well thought out use of form letters and information supplied to the public from which they could be aware of major issues. It's just that we were the only ones supplying an informed information base. We don't apologise for doing that. And the State Minister criticised people from interstate for writing into a South Australian EIS even though the Commonwealth ordered it.

On the election eve, the Friday before the election, the company submitted their supplement to the draft EIS. This was so they could go to the Government, to potentially a new Labor Government, and say we've complied with all of our obligations under the process and we want us to be considered an operating mine under Labor Party policy. There was a serious risk that Labor would have taken that option had they been elected although it would have been strenuously opposed and it would have been difficult to defend.

The supplement used rhetorical dismissals of the submissions, not only from the conservation movement but also from Environment Australia. The concerns they raised were not better dealt with in detail and substantively than the ones that we raised.

Linda Marks: The main concern with the Beverley uranium project is that it uses acid in situ leaching to extract the uranium. This process is renown for the environmental damage it has created around the world where it has been used. In addition, at Beverley, they are discharging all of the liquid waste back into the aquifer. This waste liquid contains highly mobile radioactive material and heavy metals. Back to David again:

David Noonan: Senator Hill is required to give his recommendations in regard to the Beverley proposal. He has to inform the proponent of his recommendations by Friday 11th. That period was actually extended by a month over the usual legal arrangements and the usual limits on time in which the Commonwealth has to report of its assessment of an EIS. Senator Hill had to go to General Atomics, their representatives and ask their permission to extend the assessment process by 4 weeks. The South Australian Government has paid for a US consultant to come in to advise them on in situ uranium mining, to advise them on its impacts and on its regulation. It was the first public admission by Government that there were serious concerns with the process and the issues from this mine proposal and that their department did not have the expertise to deal with it.

There's a balance between Senator Hill's recommendations that are due in a non-public realm on Friday 11th to the proponent and the formal decision that is held by Senator Minchin as the Minister for Resources. Senator Minchin does not have to comply with the recommendations of Senator Hill or of Environment Australia. So we have a division between the environment portfolio and all of the work that has been done up until Friday 11th, and the right of Senator Minchin to give an approval and set conditions that don't have to take those recommendations into account. We would expect by early next year (1999) a joint announcement of approval by the South Australian and Commonwealth Governments. The regulatory arrangements that they put in place for Beverley will set the precedents for what is intended for the Honeymoon mine in South Australia that is also operating at a trial stage and also producing uranium as we speak, but which has not yet submitted its draft EIS. And for a number of other in situ leach uranium mining proposals in WA and some potential future ones around the Lake Frome area in SA.

Linda Marks: That was David Noonan, campaign officer for ACF in Adelaide, speaking at the Nuclear Free Australia Forum in Melbourne late last year. After the Lafferty independent assessment into the hydrology of the Beverley project, Senator Hill announced a two-week extension before giving his decision on the mine. Then on Christmas Eve he gave his recommendation for the project to go ahead. Now the South Australian Government has released its assessment report on the Environmental Impact Statement. Eric Miller caught up with David Noonan yesterday:

David Noonan: At present it's only the South Australian Government's assessment report. The Commonwealth, while Senator Hill gave his recommendations on Christmas Eve in a attempt to avoid public scrutiny over the adverse news he was dropping on Australia about his favour to give approval for the Beverley uranium mine, he has not yet released the Commonwealth assessment report. Nor has he released the independent US consultant, Lafferty's report that the ACF has been attempting to obtain under the Freedom of Information act.

Eric Miller: Other than this mine being uranium, one of the concerns was that they were pumping their waste down into the aquifer.

David Noonan: Indeed, Senator Hill allowed the company to build what he called a trial uranium mine and to dispose of its liquid wastes into the local ground water system for a year. Then on Christmas Eve he announced that there are genuine concerns with the impacts and the threats to other ground water systems and that he would order further studies into the ground water systems and into the waste discharge proposal. In effect, after the event he allowed them to carry out those activities for a year.

Eric Miller: This was the special report that delayed the assessment to come out.

David Noonan: The Lafferty consultancy report process had delayed the Commonwealth's decision by some 8 weeks or more, I think. The Lafferty report, as we understand it, is highly critical of the information base on which the Government was making decisions favourable to the company proposal and has established the inadequacy of the information available and has recommended further studies on a range of matters.

Eric Miller: The Commonwealth just gives out its assessment and then they decide whether the mine will go ahead or not?

David Noonan: Senator Hill's recommendations are only advice to the formal decision-maker, Senator Minchin, the Senator for Resources ie the Minister for Mines. We can expect that those two ministers will have collaborated and that the approval process would proceed if it were left to them from now.

Eric Miller: Even though there are concerns about the aquifer, pumping radio-active waste and acid back into the aquifer, you believe they still will give approval for this mine.

David Noonan: They intend to. Senator Hill claims there are no environmental reasons why General Atomics should not be allowed to go ahead with what would be the world's first commercial sulphuric acid in situ leach uranium mine, a technology only used commercially in Eastern Europe in the former Soviet Union. He, in effect, has failed in his environmental obligations, he is not protecting the Australian environment, he is really acquiescing to the interests of the mining industry and to the interests of the Minister for Resources ie Mines.

Eric Miller: This mine has been really fast tracked. It could be the first uranium mine to come off the ranks since the Liberals got into power.

David Noonan: The trial mine that they constructed is in fact a real mine and if the company chose to go to stage one of commercial production within two months of modification of that trial mine they could be in commercial production. They also have plans to build a larger adjoining facility and they haven't yet nominated which course of action they intend to take.

Eric Miller: This is a worrying situation. We have this mine that not many people have heard about and it could be producing commercial uranium by the end of the year.

David Noonan: If they choose to go to stage one production it could be in commercial production certainly by mid year. There is also the issue of the Honeymoon trial uranium mine that is producing uranium at a site in South Australia west of Broken Hill at present. That will go through an EIS process next.

Eric Miller: We should really be keeping an eye on these mines.

David Noonan: At Honeymoon, as at Beverley, they've allowed them to construct the mine prior to having any formal public consultation, prior to even issuing the draft Environmental Impact Statement. We have seen at Beverley now, with the advice of this US consultant, Lafferty, that the information that they were using was inadequate. There are real concerns about the risk to the ground water systems and concerns about the inappropriateness of the company proposal to discharge all of its liquid wastes to ground water.

Eric Miller: Thanks very much, David.

David Noonan: You're welcome.

Linda Marks: That was David Noonan, campaign officer for ACF in Adelaide speaking to Eric yesterday by phone from Adelaide.

Eric, you have some news from today's Age.

Eric Miller: In today's Age, the German Government is having spats with the Governments of Britain and France. Germany has large contracts to reprocess spent fuel rods in France and in Britain in their reprocessing plants and Germany says it's going to cancel those contracts and there will be no more reprocessing after the year 2000. These contracts were multi-billion dollar contracts over 10 years and the French and the English Governments are saying that they need to be compensated for the termination of contracts. The German Government is saying, no, we didn't have any firm contracts with them. The article goes on to say that the German Government is planning to close down its 29 nuclear plants over the next few decades. We hope that it will be within one decade.

Also this week, news about the French reprocessing plant. The French AAP service reported on Wednesday that the Cogema plant was notified by a French judge that it had been placed under investigation, this is one step short of being charged, for practises endangering lives and exposing others to immediate risk of death and injury. The Cogema plant, the reprocessing plant in France, is under threat of being charged for putting people in immediate danger.

These plants really are dangerous, they are the dirtiest part of the nuclear fuel cycle, and this is one aspect of the nuclear fuel cycle that is being phased down in most parts of the world. At the same time we are trying to increase our uranium mines. The nuclear industry is under threat in most parts of the world but we are trying to increase our uranium production.

Linda Marks: Just before we go we have time for a few 'What's Ons'. We've got Invasion Day Rally on the 26th January. Meet at the GPO at 1pm.

In the evening is the Koorie Survival Day concert at 7.30 at the Royal Derby Hotel on the corner of Brunswick Street and Alexander Parade, Fitzroy.

The Palm Sunday Rally on March 28th, meet at 1pm at the State Library. Stop Jabiluka! Land Rights Now! Stop the Nuclear Threat!

After the Palm Sunday Rally there is going to be a mass blockade at North Ltd from Monday March 29th to Thursday April 1st. North Ltd is at 476 St. Kilda Road.

Eric Miller: That's all we have time for in the Radio Active Show this week, Linda, so it's good bye from Eric.

Linda Marks: And it's good bye from Linda.

Transcript produced by Linda Marks - with much thanks!!!
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