PETER WILLIAMS: Let the Experts Decide Bendigo’s Future

It's my neighbourhood

February 25 is a significant day for Bendigo — Bendigo in Central Otago that is.

Like its Australian namesake, this district was built on gold. In Victoria, large-scale mining never entirely stopped; the Fosterville Gold Mine continues to operate as one of that state’s major producers. In Central Otago, by contrast, the last meaningful gold operations wound down in 1942.

Now the question is whether Bendigo, Otago returns to the industry that created it.

On February 25 a seven-member expert panel chaired by former High Court judge Matthew Muir KC started considering an application from Santana Minerals to establish an open-cast gold mine in the Dunstan Mountains. The panel has more than 9,000 pages of technical evidence and 140 working days to reach a decision. That is not a rushed rubber stamp. It is a structured, quasi-judicial assessment.

Before going further, two disclosures.

I live in Bendigo.

And I own 3,308 Santana shares, currently worth roughly $3,500. If the consent is refused, those shares may be close to worthless. If consent is granted and production proceeds as projected, they might double or better.

Either outcome is financially marginal for me. It might pay for a new set of golf clubs or a modest vehicle upgrade. It will not determine the comfort of my retirement.

What will determine my quality of life is whether any development near my home is environmentally safe and properly regulated.

I am about 15 kilometres from the proposed site. Traffic servicing the mine via State Highway 8 would pass roughly a kilometre from my house. That makes me a neighbour, not a distant commentator.

I cannot see the pit from where I live. I am unlikely to hear machinery. Industrial lighting will not be visible from my property. The principal issue for me is water.

We draw potable and irrigation supply from a private bore about 27 metres deep into the Bendigo aquifer, adjacent to the Clutha River. The water is tested quarterly. Recent laboratory results show nitrate at 0.12 milligrams per litre — compared with the World Health Organization guideline of 50 milligrams per litre. We are hundreds of times below the threshold.

Because of the proposed mine, we have added arsenic and cyanide to our testing regime. Our latest readings show arsenic at 0.0011 milligrams per litre (WHO guideline: 0.01 mg/L) and cyanide at 0.002 milligrams per litre (WHO guideline: 0.07 mg/L). In both cases, our water sits comfortably below international safety limits.

Those are not slogans. They are empirical measurements.

The question is not whether mining uses chemicals. It does. The question is whether modern engineering can isolate and manage those chemicals so they do not contaminate groundwater.

Any tailings storage facility must be designed with liners, seepage collection systems, monitoring bores, and contingency plans. Hydrogeological modelling must demonstrate that contaminants cannot migrate into the aquifer at harmful concentrations. Financial assurance must be sufficient to cover remediation if things go wrong.

These are technical matters. They require expertise in geotechnical engineering, hydrology, environmental chemistry and risk assessment. They cannot be resolved by placards or social media campaigns.

Opposition to the mine is real and deeply felt in parts of Bendigo and Tarras. Concerns about landscape scarring, dust, heavy vehicle movements and reputational impacts on vineyards are legitimate topics for scrutiny.

But emotional intensity is not evidence.

Central Otago’s unemployment rate is about 1.4 percent — effectively full employment. Jobs are available. What are not common are roles paying $140,000 a year, the average annual income Santana’s chief executive has suggested for more than 300 workers once operations are fully underway. More than 1,000 applications have reportedly been received.

Those wages would circulate through Cromwell, Alexandra and the wider district — into engineering workshops, transport firms, cafés and housing.

That economic benefit must be weighed against environmental risk. Neither should be exaggerated. Neither should be minimised.

An open-cast pit will alter a landscape. It will create visual change and temporary disturbance. It will also generate royalties, employment and export revenue. The policy framework exists precisely to evaluate such trade-offs.

The panel chaired by Matthew Muir KC was appointed because of its collective competence — in engineering, ecology, planning law and financial analysis. Its task is to interrogate the modelling, test the assumptions, and decide whether the proposal meets statutory environmental thresholds.

If the groundwater modelling is flawed, if the containment systems are inadequate, if the long-term monitoring is insufficient or the financial bonds too small, then consent should be declined.

But if the evidence demonstrates that environmental risks are quantified and mitigated to acceptable standards, then reflex opposition grounded purely in fear of change should not prevail.

We cannot claim to support evidence-based policymaking and then abandon it when the issue becomes local and emotive.

Bendigo was founded on gold. For more than 80 years it has prospered without it. Whether it returns to mining should not be decided by nostalgia, nor by speculative windfall expectations, nor by environmental absolutism.

It should be decided by experts applying evidence to law.

That is what this panel was appointed to do. And that — not volume of protest nor promise of profit — is what should determine Bendigo’s future.

Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Subscribe to Peter William's Substack here