Three days in the goldfields: on the trail of the uranium miners

Comment: Mining’s benefits will not last forever: Please notice the statement, "fly-in fly-out jobs,” Canada will bring their own experience Uranium miners! The local uranium mine will not employ local people!

Tuesday 4th August 2009, 6:43pm
by Scott Ludlam

A small band of campaigners visited the Western Australian Goldfields in late July and kicked up a storm of headlines and controversy at a series of community meetings about uranium mining in Western Australia.

Together with internationally renowned anti-nuclear activist and pediatrician Dr Helen Caldicott, Greens MLC Robin Chapple, and representatives of the Anti-Nuclear Alliance of WA (ANAWA), I met with local councils in Leonora and Kalgoorlie, the local Development Commission, Aboriginal representative bodies, interested members of the community and local mothers to discuss the possible impacts of mining uranium in the region and the transportation of uranium oxide through Kalgoorlie.

We received a warm reception from the people who came out on a frosty Monday evening to hear about the known health effects of uranium from Dr Caldicott. It was a confronting and at times edgy discussion, as it sunk in just how insidious the health assaults of low-level ionising radiation can be, particularly on children.

Concerns were raised from Traditional Owners of Mulga Rock, probably the closest target area to Kalgoorlie currently in the cross-hairs of the uranium miners. There's a degree of confusion out here as the mad scramble to open the region to uranium mining picks up speed.

On Tuesday we travelled out to Leonora, the regional centre nearest to the proposed Yeelirrie uranium mine, the largest in the state. With the promise of less than 300 medium term fly-in fly-out jobs we met with local Aboriginal people and other community members deeply concerned about the potential damage to their traditional lands and its inhabitants, with little or no identified benefit to their community.

This became something of a theme at our meetings, including with the Goldfields Esperance Development Commission and local councils: local people are being asked to host foreign-owned and controlled mining companies who will fly their workforces in from Perth and put hundreds of radioactive shipments onto local roads, with scant benefits to the local communities, set against a number of serious risks.

At best, all Kalgoorlie could hope to gain from the uranium mining will be a marginal increase in business for local subcontractors.

On Tuesday, BHP Billiton took us out to the proposed Yeelirrie mine site where drilling is underway. We saw where the previous test mine sites from the 70's had been rehabilitated to a reasonable standard, with the sparce Spinifex country slowly coming back to life. It is ironic that BHP have inherited a site that was cleaned up after 20 years of pressure from the Greens and local community groups, only to be subjected to a drilling campaign which the company hopes will lead to the tearing up of the country again and the creation of a radioactive hot spot a thousand times larger.

It is one thing to consider uranium mining from cities thousands of kilometres away from the impact areas; and quite another to visit the regional communities who will shortly be on the front line unless some sanity returns to the old parties. We're not holding our breath for that though; now it's all hands on deck.

http://greensmps.org.au/blog/three-days-goldfields-trail-uranium-miners