Organisers of next week’s public meetings about a proposed Bendigo gold mine say there is “strong interest” and concern about the proposal.

Santana Minerals, an Australian company, will file its fast-track application for a gold mine near Bendigo this month via the government’s fast-track approvals process.

Lobby group Sustainable Tarras Inc said it will announce panelists later this week for two “urgent” public meetings, in Dunedin on Tuesday June 17 and Wānaka on Thursday June 19.

Sustainable Tarras Inc chair Suze Keith said the panel will outline what is known about plans for the gold mine, take audience questions, and discuss what the community can do. 

“From the information released so far, there are numerous very worrying issues,” she said. 

“These include the size and scale of the mine right in the heart of an Outstanding Natural Landscape, the massive tailings dam which will hold 10,000 Olympic swimming pools of toxic waste, and the extensive use and storage of large quantities of cyanide just upstream of the Clutha River. 

“And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Read more: Santana’s fast track application just weeks away

Suze said local communities are just coming to grips with the scale of the mine. 

“Even the cyanide-leaching processing plant will be 130m wide and a kilometre long. The mine will involve an estimated 200 million tonnes of waste rock and 13 million tons of toxic tailings. These numbers, and the likely impacts and risks, are mind-boggling.”

She said despite numerous requests for details and meetings Santana has not been “open and transparent with concerned locals”.

“They’re not providing us information we’re reasonably asking for, and which we know they have got,” she said.

Santana has shared information about the project on its website, and at drop-in sessions in Tarras and Cromwell.

The company has said while the project would be assessed under the fast-track approval process - which aims to streamline projects of national significance - there was mandated legislation and standards that would need to be met, including the Resource Management Act and associated regulations and national policy statements. 

Suze said the mine is “getting attention from people who are concerned that the fast-track process is being used inappropriately for a project which is not about public infrastructure or community benefit, but rather is solely about extraction of resources and maximising shareholder profits, most of which will go offshore”. 

“This mine would become the largest single earthworks in Otago since the Clyde Dam could be approved without the general public having any right of input into the proposal,” she said.

People interested in attending the meeting in Wānaka can register to find out more here. 

PHOTO: Supplied