Mungana Gold Open Pit Development Project
Kagara Ltd is the proponent for the Mungana Gold Open Pit Development (MGOPD) Project. The project would involve open pit mining of a high grade gold resource at a rate of approximately 1.2 million tonnes a year adjacent to polymetallic reserves currently being mined at Mungana. The project would be situated on the existing Red Dome Project leases, which lie 15km west of Chillagoe in north Queensland. The existing tenures are mining leases (ML) 4928, 4977, 5176 and 5319, and Exploration Permit Minerals 15458. The life of the project would be approximately 3.5 years.
Red Dome Gold Mine operated from 1988 until 1997 and included open pit mining, production of gold ore and gold/copper concentrates via heap leaching, carbon-in-pulp, carbon-in-leach and flotation processes. Rehabilitation of the site was carried out at that time following the cessation of mining.
Kagara recommenced operations in 2006 to bring several polymetallic lenses into production. The current Mungana polymetallic mine lies within existing mining leases on land that has previously been disturbed by mining or exploration. Kagara has approval to undertake underground mining and the construction of associated infrastructure such as offices, workshops, power corridor, roads and water impoundments. Additionally, at the present time, a polymetallic processing plant has been constructed to 52% completion on site. A tailing storage facility has been constructed to 95% completion.
The MGOPD would use the infrastructure originally intended for processing of polymetallic minerals with modifications for gold and copper recovery; additional crushing and grinding, copper flotation filtration, carbon-in-leach process, elution circuit, gold room and a cyanide treatment circuit.
The proposed pit would have a depth of 260m and an area of 23.5ha. Development would include construction of non-acid-forming and potential-acid-forming waste rock dumps. With the exception of waste dumps the development would lie within the existing site disturbance footprint.
The Red Dome Project, including the development of an open pit, was referred by the proponent in 2006 to the then Department of the Environment and Heritage under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). On 3 April 2006, the Department of the Environment and Heritage determined the project to be not a controlled action provided it is undertaken in a particular manner that the Commonwealth government specified in their decision notice.
On 7 July 2009, an application was made by the proponent under section 71 of the Environmental Protection Act 1994 for the preparation of a voluntary environmental impact statement (EIS). The application was approved on 10 July 2009.
In accordance with section 41 of the EP Act, the proponent has prepared and submitted to the chief executive of the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) a draft terms of reference (TOR) for carrying out an EIS for the proposal.
The process for the assessment of this project is as follows:
Draft TOR for the EIS will be available for public review and comment from Monday, 31 August 2009, until close of business on Friday, 9 October 2009. The DERM’s chief executive invites written comments from any person in relation to the draft TOR within that period. Please address written submissions to:
The Chief Executive
Department of Environment and Resource Management
Attention: The EIS Coordinator (Mungana Gold Project)
PO Box 15155
CITY EAST, QLD 4002
Please note that it is a statutory requirement that all comments will be forwarded to the proponent so that they may consider them and provide a response to DERM.
Copies of publicly available documents can be obtained by accessing the links below:
For further information about the EIS process for the Mungana Gold Open Pit Development Mine Project please contact the EIS Co-ordinator on telephone 1300 130 372.
Last updated: 28 October 2009