State Government Plans and Policies The Queensland Government's Abandoned Mines Management Policy, which guides the State's current and future activities on the site, has the following outcomes: ∕ Preventing potential exposure of the surrounding community to hazards on an abandoned mine site by removing or mitigating hazards; ∕ Implementing control measures to limit the level of adverse impacts to the surrounding and downstream environments; ∕ Minimising the ongoing maintenance and monitoring requirements for a site—this includes geotechnical and geochemical stability; and ∕ Investigating opportunities to commercialise abandoned mines and/or repurpose the land for a future appropriate use, considering the economic, community, cultural, and conservation values and constraints of the site. Those aims are also expressed in the 2022 Queensland Resources Industry Development Plan. That plan outlines the State's goals to develop principles, pilots and research and development to support the re-commercialisation, and where appropriate, repurposing, of abandoned mines, provided it is in the public benefit and delivers net environmental benefit. Heritage Minerals' reprocessing activities at the site, and its return of those areas to the State as a 'land management monitoring and maintenance of rehabilitated areas' for its continued management, will reduce the State's rehabilitation burden and achieve a net environmental benefit. C Historic and Surrounding Land Uses More than a century of mining at Mount Morgan has put the surrounding land in a degraded state, with contaminated runoff and seepage present. Little is known regarding the site history prior to mining operations commencing in 1882, however it is assumed that the undisturbed areas was consistent with the undisturbed areas adjacent to the site towards the north and west. For the purposes of this amendment application, the pre-mining land use is the use of the land prior to its disturbance by Heritage Minerals and therefore prior to the point in time relevant to rehabilitation obligations. That pre-mining use is a decommissioned mine managed by the DNRMMRRD in accordance with the Abandoned Mines Land Program. The land is heavily impacted by from historic mining with unrehabilitated waste dumps and contaminated water impoundments. The DNRMMRRD carries out remediation activities including contaminated water seepage interception, contaminated water treatment, heritage building maintenance and land and infrastructure management. The DNRMMRRD has developed numerous revegetation plans based on years of trials and consideration of the surround ecosystems which the revegetation section in 7.5.2.4 has aligned with. D Description of Nominated PMLU Based on an understanding of relevant land use strategies, regional plans and considering the surrounding land uses, the nominated PMLU for the Upper Mundic Gully TSF is ‘Native Ecosystem’. Given the challenges associated with achieving a PMLU that matches natural historic ecosystems, as published in the Office of the Queensland Mine Rehabilitation Commissioner, Native ecosystem rehabilitation in Queensland implications for leading practice September 2023, a hybrid ecosystem is proposed that meets DNRMMRRD expectations.
Project number: 25B061
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