Protest Over Chinese-Owned Company’s Dumping of ‘Toxic’ Waste Tailings in Australia’s ‘Amazon’

Protestors hold a sign campaigning against the proposed tailings dam mine near the Tarkine rainforest in Tasmania, Australia, on July 7, 2022. Courtesy of Bob Brown Foundation

China-owned MMG is proposing to turn 140 hectares of the Tarkine rainforest, known as Australia’s “amazon” in Tasmania’s northwest, into a tailings dam where it will hold the company’s mining waste.

MMG, or Minerals and Metal Group, which is majority owned by China Minmetals Nonferrous Metals Company Limited (CMN), bought the Rosebery mine in 2009. The Rosebery mine lies on the boundary of the Tarkine rainforest and processes zinc, lead, and copper.

Bob Brown, former Greens leader and founder of the Bob Brown Foundation—an environmentalist conservation activist group—said while he’s not against mining, he and his foundation are against the building of the tailings dam in the Tarkine rainforest.

A 2023 landscape photo shows the Rosebery mine, a tailings dam in the background, and the Tarkine rainforest in the foreground. Courtesy of Bob Brown Foundation

Currently, a tailings dam lies in the Rosebery mine itself. However, MMG has proposed to build another one across the Pieman River into the Tarkine rainforest.

“We’re just saying keep your mining on your side of the river. Don’t dump your waste here into the Tarkine,” Brown told Channel 7’s Spotlight program on May 21.

“It’s one of the most beautiful places left on the planet,” he said.

Meanwhile, the method of piping the tailings directly from the Rosebery site to the proposed tailings dam has been described by the Bob Brown Foundation’s Takayna/Tarkine campaigner, Scott Jordan, as the “cheapest” and “nastiest” method—compared to more sustainable methods.

“Tailings dams don’t work,” Jordan told The Epoch Times on June 1.

“They particularly don’t work in wet and high-rainfall terrain like Western Tasmania. We know that the last tailings dam MMG commissioned was opened up in August of 2018, and within four years, it had 18 record breaches.”

Jordan added that companies in parts of the world are moving towards a new method where instead of dumping wet tailings into a natural valley and creating a tailings dam, the waste material or by-products are reduced and dried down to a powder that is then mixed into concrete and then used to backfill the voids within the mine.

“And the MMG is choosing the cheapest option, being ‘let’s just pipe it across the road and flood a rainforest valley’,” he said.

Currently, there are 250 active tailings dams across the country, according to UNSW geotechnical expert Cecelia Duong.

Meanwhile, Federal Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, Madeleine King, said in a May 31 statement that tailings dams might hold critical materials, such as cobalt, in the tailings of old copper mines to create green technologies.

“These minerals might not have been of interest when first extracted but could now be in hot demand as the world seeks to decarbonise,” King said.

“Some of the minerals we need now and into the future may not just be in the ground—they’re also in rock piles and tailings on mine sites around the country.”

Chinese-Owned Company Making ‘Megabucks,’ Says Brown

Brown said that some companies want to expand mining to areas where it would do damage to the environment.

“More and more these days, they’re in Beijing or somewhere overseas making megabucks out of destroying places they have no relationship with,” Brown said.

Jordan added that MMG’s foreign ownership is relevant to Australia.

Australia's Foreign Minister Penny Wong (L) bumps elbows with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi during their bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting in Nusa Dua on Indonesia's resort island of Bali on July 8, 2022. Johannes P. Christo/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

“In this case, China is a signatory to the World Heritage Convention, as is Australia.

“And both the Australian Government, in allowing this to happen, and the Chinese Government, in seeking to do it, are failing their obligations under the World Heritage Convention to see that world areas of heritage value are protected.”

MMG’s Rosebery general manager Steve Scott said that while mining sites “don’t go forever,” the company just needs a tailings dam “for the time we’re here.”

“We’ve got to strike a balance between jobs and the economics of it, but also solar power and wind turbines, we contribute to that (through the metals mined in Rosebery),” reported The Daily Mail.

Jordan said that around 2,500 protestors have come through the area in the past two and a half years to prevent the proposed tailings dam works from occurring.

He added that the company’s plan to build the tailings dam is currently 29 months behind schedule.

“We’ve had over 86 people arrested, physically locked onto machines or locked on the gates, or refusing to move from the road to allow the trucks to bring the machines in,” Jordan said, adding that it has been the “biggest direct action campaign” since the Franklin River.

Tasmania’s former Liberal premier Peter Gutewins previously described the protestors as “radicals” who have “attempted to destroy Tasmanian jobs that have supported the operation of the Rosebery mine for over 80 years.”

On May 4, the Bob Brown Foundation said it lodged an appeal against an earlier judgment made by the Supreme Court of Tasmania, where MMG was granted a lease to prevent less than 8 km of access by protesters, the media, and the public from the proposed waste dam site.

A spokesperson for the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment, and Water (DCCECW) told The Epoch Times in an email that MMG’s proposed Tailings Storage Facility is in the early stages of assessment.

“A final decision will not occur until a rigorous assessment process is complete. This will include opportunities for further public consultation,” the spokesperson said.

MMG has been approached for comment.