https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-29/nt-environmental-watchdog-boss-furious-after-asx-announcement/100175448
NT Environmental Protection Authority lashes mining company TNG over ASXstatements
By Felicity James
Supplied
aul Vogel
The Northern Territory's environmental watchdog boss says he issurprised and furious with mining company TNG for publishing "incorrectand potentially misleading" statements to the ASX.
Key points:
- Mining company TNG has accused the NT EPA of "retrospectively" applying NT government guidelines
- The EPA's chairman Paul Vogel says changes to the company's proposal required answers
- He says the law requires the EPA to look at cumulative environmental impacts of projects
TNG is planning to build an iron ore processing facility on DarwinHarbour.
The project is under assessment with the NT Environmental ProtectionAuthority before a final ministerial decision is made.
The NT EPA recently asked TNG for more information about the project,including how the plant would contribute to Darwin's air quality and howadditional waste would be dealt with.
On Thursday TNG published a lengthy response, claiming the requests werenot previously required and that many were "unexpected new requests".
The company also accused the NT EPA of "retrospectively" applying NT government guidelines, including national air quality standards.
NT EPA chairman Paul Vogel told the ABC he wanted to speak out, which herarely does, because TNG's response was unacceptable and tarnished his agency's reputation.
"It surprised me, I have never seen anything like it," Dr Vogel said.
"I'm pretty furious.
"I thought we had a much better understanding of a way forward in dealing with the information request."
TNG has been contacted for a response.
Dr Vogel said there were significant deficiencies in TNG's air quality modelling that needed to be addressed.
"I absolutely do not accept that is an unreasonable question to ask of a company that is going to put air pollutants into the Darwin area," DrVogel said.
"The proposal sits in Middle Arm close to Santos' LNG and Inpex's LNG facility. They all contribute pollutants to the Darwin air shed [geographic area for monitoring]."
The EPA says it needed to know how the proposed facility would affect Darwin's air quality.(
Supplied: HC Blechynden
)
Dr Vogel said the NT EPA wanted to understand what the cumulative impact of the project would mean for the health of the Darwin population, assessing it against national health standards.
"We are required by law to look at cumulative impacts and if we don't do that properly then we could be subject to judicial review of theadvice we provide to government," he said.
"This is not something dreamed up by the NT EPA or NT government. These are national standards."
Dr Vogel said the information requested from TNG was not new and was either previously requested or resulted from changes the company made to theirproposal.
One of these changes was a new wastewater recycling plant, which the company promised to build instead of dumping huge amounts of wastewater intoDarwin Harbour.
But Dr Vogel said changes to the proposal had also increased the project's emissions and predicted waste.
This included an increase in the amount of waste to be transported back to TNG's mine in Central Australia — from an initial 50,000 tonnes to arevised 500,000 tonnes a year.
"We asked questions about how is that substantial 10-fold increase in waste going to be managed?" Dr Vogel said.
"That was a question they found some offence with."
The company said in its ASX disclosure on Thursday that it was "considering its options" for the development, because of the amountof work already completed and the "substantial" amount needed to respond to the NT EPA.
"We thought we'd found a sensible way through, with focus on the high priority information request first," Dr Vogel said.
"We know that these requests cost time and money, we're acutely aware of that, and we only focus on things we think are significant."
"I was mightily surprised to see the ASX announcement which lays the fault right at EPA's door — I totally reject that proposition."
Hope this helps @bobadah
