from the smh

Yvonne Margarula, a senior Mirarr elder, said the company told her people "only the good stuff … they don't tell us the whole story. [They] treat us mob like something else, like we don't know, like kids."

Ms Margarula said she worried about Aboriginal children swimming and fishing in the polluted creeks.

She said that Mirarr were not respected by the company.

Justin O'Brien, the Gundjeihmi Corporation's executive officer, said the traditional owners had decided to make their concerns public despite having good relations with the company on other issues, including renegotiation of the mine agreement and settlement of a native title claim over the mining town of Jabiru.

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Gus: I still have copies of all the impact statement studies made back then in the 1970s and there was a lot of concern that this could happen — and worse. My picture at top is that of the Ranger mine...

The company that operates the Ranger uranium mine has confirmed higher-than-normal salt levels in a creek in Kakadu National Park is a result of its operations.

Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) has investigated two salinity spikes in Magela Creek downstream of the mine in April.

Chief executive Rob Atkinson says run-off water from the mine had flowed into the creek.

He says ERA is consulting stakeholders to prevent it from happening again.

"We've got a few concepts and we've trialled a few things but we need to work through those with our regulators and stakeholders," he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Atkinson says he hopes Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes a stop in the Northern Territory to discuss the proposed super profits tax.

Kevin Rudd travelled to Western Australia and Queensland this week to consult the mining industry about the tax.

"Obviously the NT's economy really relies on the mining and resources industry," Mr Atkinson said.

"We play a very significant part in not only the economy, but the social fabric of the Northern Territory.

Since Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant began leaking radiation after last month's earthquake and tsunami, those watching with consternation have included the Mirarr Aboriginal people of Australia's Northern Territory, who are determined to limit uranium mining on their land despite the promise of vast riches.

The Mirarr are the traditional owners of land where uranium has been mined for more than 30 years and exported all over the world. Tepco, which operates the Fukushima plant, is a long-standing customer of Ranger, the principal mine.

The senior traditional elder in the area, Yvonne Margarula, has written to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, expressing her people's sorrow about Japan's suffering, and their concern about the nuclear emergency.

"Given the long history between Japanese nuclear companies and Australian uranium miners, it is likely that the radiation problems at Fukushima are, at least in part, being fuelled by uranium derived from our traditional lands," she said. "This makes us feel very sad."

Ms Margarula also told Mr Ban that events in Japan had strengthened the Mirarr's resolve to oppose work at a second mine, named Jabiluka – the world's largest known undeveloped uranium deposit. Instead, they want to see Jabiluka incorporated into Kakadu, the World Heritage-listed national park where Ranger is also located.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/aborigines-to-block-uranium-mining-after-japan-disaster-2267467.html

see image and story at top...

A US federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit seeking to hold Rio Tinto responsible for human rights violations and thousands of deaths linked to a Bougainville copper and gold mine it once ran.

A divided 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed a lower court's dismissal of claims against the mining giant for genocide and war crimes, while upholding the dismissal of claims for racial discrimination and crimes against humanity.

"The complaint alleges purposeful conduct undertaken by Rio Tinto with the intent to assist in the commission of violence, injury, and death, to the degree necessary to keep its mines open," Judge Mary Schroeder wrote.

The 6-5 decision on Tuesday revives an 11-year-old lawsuit on behalf of about 10,000 current and former residents of the South Pacific island of Bougainville, where a late 1980s uprising led to the use of military force and many deaths.

The Bougainville residents claimed Rio Tinto's Panguna mine operations polluted the island and the company forced native workers to live in "slave like" conditions.

They also contended that after workers began to sabotage the mine in 1988, Rio Tinto goaded the government of Papua New Guinea into exacting retribution and conspired to impose a blockade that resulted in the deaths of 10,000 civilians by 1997.

Rio Tinto shut the mine in 1989.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-26/us-court-revives-rio-tinto-lawsuit/3601136

Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory is set to be expanded, with the inclusion of land previously earmarked for uranium mining.

The Northern Land Council (NLC) has agreed for a 1,200 hectare parcel of land containing rich reserves of uranium to be incorporated in to the park.

It is considered the final step in a long battle that Aboriginal traditional owner Jeffrey Lee has waged to protect his land from mining.

The uranium-rich mining lease Koongarra was excised from Kakadu when the conservation area was established in the late 1970s.

The lease is held by French company Areva, which wanted to mine the area for uranium.

Two years ago, Mr Lee, the sole traditional owner of the land, called on the Federal Government to incorporate it in to Kakadu.

The Government accepted the offer and referred the matter to the NLC.

The NLC conducted consultations and its full council has agreed to endorse Mr Lee's wishes.

The council and land trust will now move to enter an agreement with national parks to incorporate Koongarra into Kakadu.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-01/jeffrey-lee-land-uranium-kakadu/4047458

see image at top...

Energy Resources Australia says open-cut uranium mining has been completed at its Ranger mine in the Northern Territory after more than 30 years.

Open-cut mining started at the site in 1980, making it one of the world's longest continually producing uranium mines.

The mine is near Jabiru, within the borders of Kakadu National Park, about 250 kilometres south-east of Darwin.

About 30 million tonnes of material will be backfilled into the pit over the next two years.

It is expected that exploration drilling for the mine's proposed new underground operation, known as Ranger Three Deep, will begin in the region next year.

ERA says it will have to put in years of work to secure environmental approval and traditional owner consent for underground mining.

General manager of operations, Tim Eckersley, says the company has started digging an exploration decline tunnel.

"Thus far, we have approval to undertake the decline as an exploration decline," he said.

"We would be expecting the environmental approvals in 2015, so there's several years of work there, along with our agreements with traditional owners, before we would begin to undertake any mining underground."

ERA plans to reinject concentrated brine from the Ranger tailings dam into the open cut mine pit they have started to refill.

It is building a brine concentrator to boil off water from the tailings dam.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-10/ranger-uranium-open-cut-mining-ends-era/4418596

See picture at top...

CHURCH ROCK, N.M. — In this dusty corner of the Navajo reservation, where seven generations of families have been raised among the arroyos and mesas, Bertha Nez is facing the prospect of having to leave her land forever.

The uranium pollution is so bad that it is unsafe for people to live here long term, environmental officials say. Although the uranium mines that once pocked the hillsides were shut down decades ago, mounds of toxic waste are still piled atop the dirt, raising concerns about radioactive dust and runoff.

And as cleanup efforts continue, Ms. Nez and dozens of other residents of the Red Water Pond Road community, who have already had to leave their homes at least twice since 2007 because of the contamination, are now facing a more permanent relocation. Although their village represents only a small sliver of the larger Navajo nation, home to nearly 300,000 people, they are bearing the brunt of the environmental problems.

“It feels like we are being pushed around,” said Ms. Nez, 67, a retired health care worker, who recalled the weeks and months spent in motel rooms in nearby Gallup as crews hauled away radioactive soil from the community’s backyards and roadsides.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/us/nestled-amid-toxic-waste-a-navajo-village-faces-losing-its-land-forever.html?_r=0

The Morrison Government signed off on a controversial uranium mine one day before calling the federal election, and did not publicly announce the move until the environment department uploaded the approval document the day before Anzac Day.

• The approval is subject to 32 strict environmental conditions, a spokesman for the environment minister says
• Traditional owners are deeply concerned over the potential impacts of the mine on the environment
• About 36 million tonnes of radioactive waste will be produced during the life of the mine

The Yeelirrie Uranium mine, located 500 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, requires both federal and state approval.

The state approval of the proposed mine is still being fought in the state's Supreme Court by members of the Tjiwarl traditional owners.

In 2016, the West Australian Environment Protection Agency advised the mine not be approved, concluding it posed too great a risk of extinction to some native animals.

The former Liberal Barnett government controversially approved the mine in 2017, just weeks before it lost the West Australian election.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-26/government-approved-uranium-mine-...

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Mining giant Rio Tinto’s plans to clean up the controversial Ranger uranium mine have been thrown into doubt after objections from a Singapore-based hedge fund.

The mine is owned by ASX-listed Energy Resources Australia (ERA), which in turn is 68% owned by Rio Tinto.

ERA is required to remediate the mine site and return it to a state fit to be incorporated in the surrounding Kakadu national park, by 2026.

There have been longstanding concerns about the risk of a uranium leakfrom the Ranger mine, amplified by its location at the eastern end of the remote national park in the Northern Territory.

A decade ago it was revealed contaminated water was leaking every day from a tailings dam. In 2013 a burst leach tank at the mine released up to 1m litres of acidic radioactive slurry.

Those concerns, which contributed heavily to Mirrar native title holders insisting that mining cease, underscore the risk if the site is left without remediation.

Last month, ERA asked shareholders to tip in an additional $476m to finance the clean-up operation, and Rio Tinto said it would guarantee the money if no other shareholders wanted to contribute.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/17/rio-tintos-plan-to-c...

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The mining giant Rio Tinto will be able to go ahead with a plan to clean up the Ranger uranium mine after admitting it intends to fully take over the mine’s operator, Energy Resources Australia.

The admission fulfils conditions set by the Takeovers Panel, which last month threw Rio Tinto’s plans to help fund the cleanup – estimated to cost $830m – into disarray after a Singapore hedge fund objected to the proposal.

ERA is required to remediate the mine site to a level where it can be incorporated into the surrounding Kakadu national park by 2026 but does not have enough money to do so.

To fund the clean up, the company asked shareholders to tip in an additional $476m – money Rio Tinto says it will provide if, as is likely, other investors don’t want to pour cash into a deal that is unlikely to provide any financial return to ERA.

ERA also agreed not to develop another mine at Jabiluka, to the north of Ranger, which is bitterly opposed by Mirrar traditional owners.

However, hedge fund Zentree Investments, which owns about 16% of ERA, objected to the underwriting arrangement, which it said was unfair to minority shareholders and stopped ERA’s management accepting any other offers.

Zentree has long complained that Rio Tinto has its eyes on hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable tax losses run up by ERA.

The Takeovers Panel initially ruled the deal was unacceptable, but then agreed it could go ahead if Rio Tinto revealed what it intended to do if, as a result of the underwriting arrangement, it ended up owning more than 90% of ERA.

On Friday, Rio Tinto revealed that if it hit the 90% mark, it would compulsorily acquire the remaining shares.

Rio Tinto declined to comment.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/24/rio-tinto-given-go-ahea...

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“The Mirarr Traditional Owners welcome the conclusion today of uranium mining on their country with the end of processing at the Ranger Uranium Mine adjacent to Kakadu National Park. The ending of active operations comes some 40 years after the Commonwealth government, which originally owned 50% of the mine, imposed uranium mining on traditional owners.”

—Statement by Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, 8 January

“Although Ranger went ahead, massive protests prevented Jabiluka, a sacred site for the local Mirarr people, from being mined.”

—Australian Financial Review, 8 January

I think it was early 1998 when I first met Jerome Fitzgerald. I’d set up a stall near the corner of Bourke and Swanston streets in Melbourne with a petition, info and leaflets for one of the first rallies of the Jabiluka Action Group.

“Good on you son, but you’re never going to stop it”, he told me. Jerome Fitzgerald was a retired metalworker—friendly enough, but unimpressed by my one-person-with-rickety-card-table operation. “I led 10,000 metalworkers down Bourke Street protesting against uranium mining back in the 1970s, and we never stopped it then”, he said. “And I don’t see 10,000 metalworkers marching down Bourke Street now.” 

Over the next couple of years, Jerome would stop for a chat every once in a while, when I was on a Friday night stall in town. Each time, we’d have a version of the same conversation, with me trying but never quite succeeding in enticing him out of his “good on you but you’ll never win” frame of mind.

Probably the closest I came was after one of our regular blockades of the St Kilda Road headquarters of North Limited, the company developing the mine. By this stage, the Mirarr Aboriginal people had invited people onto their land for a mass blockade of the Jabiluka site. During the six months that followed, more than 5,000 activists travelled to the blockade. More than 500 were arrested. Also arrested was Mirarr senior traditional owner Yvonne Margarula, literally arrested and prosecuted for “trespass” on her own land for protesting against the mine. Blockaders travelled back to the cities and got involved in the campaign, especially in Melbourne.

Unlike those early days of leafleting in Bourke Street, we could hand out a leaflet saying “Jabiluka” and people knew what it was about. We never duplicated Jerome Fitzgerald’s feat of 10,000 metalworkers in Bourke Street, but John Cummins from the construction union set up a series of meetings for us on St Kilda Road building sites, and small groups of construction workers provided an important boost to our blockades of North Limited. 

The campaign was gaining traction in other ways: someone noticed that every time there was a major protest, the share price of North Limited tanked—and even more so the share price of its subsidiary, Energy Resources Australia, which was digging at Jabiluka while operating the nearby Ranger uranium mine. Slowly but surely, the campaign was nailing the company’s precious share price to the floor. 

Another sign of progress was that, after one of the protests at North Limited, the Age had dedicated an editorial to the campaign. The Jabiluka mine was problematic, the Age intoned. On Aboriginal land, opposed by the Mirarr people and within the borders of Australia’s most famous national park. The cause of the protesters was just, according to the Age, but we had done ourselves no favours by our methods, including stopping people going about their lawful work.

The next time I saw Jerome Fitzgerald, I told him about the editorial. He laughed and recounted a story from his time as a shop steward at Johns & Waygood, one of the biggest and most important heavy engineering firms in the country. He paraphrased an Age editorial about a strike: “Oh, the workers have a legitimate complaint, they’ve been treated terribly, the employer is totally at fault, they should really listen, the workers have a good cause—but they’ve done themselves and their cause terrible harm by taking strike action”. He added his own editorial comment on this, looking me straight in the eyes: “Listen. You’re never going to get anywhere till you’ve been condemned by the Melbourne Age”. 

I’ve always remembered that line. At the time, I took it as a backhanded compliment, that we were actually getting somewhere. And we were. 

The complicated alliance—of the Mirarr Aboriginal people fighting for their country, of conservation groups, socialists, unionists and all sorts with our rickety card tables, campaigning and protesting and blockading—was still building. Eventually, we had such an impact on the share price of North and Energy Resources Australia that ERA was declared by the business pages of the Age to be the “dog stock” of 1999, and Rio Tinto bought out North Limited at a bargain basement price. 

Rio is as large and vicious as companies come, but it decided that the practical and political obstacles in front of Jabiluka were insurmountable. It shelved the project, backfilled the mine and started revegetation. The Mirarr and their allies had won an extraordinary victory.

And now, a further important milestone. From midnight on 8 January, operations have finally ceased at the Ranger uranium mine, opened up by ERA in the late 1970s against the wishes of the Mirarr people. The world’s third biggest uranium mine is now history. The massive milling operation on the site, which would have been processing ore from Jabiluka if not for the opposition of the Mirarr, is now shut.

There are still many battles to fight. The Mirarr want the land rehabilitated and the Jabiluka mining lease terminated. Plenty of local people still live in poverty and get cancer at twice the Northern Territory average. The nuclear industry continues its trail of toxic destruction around the world. But if it weren’t for the incredible campaign that the Mirarr spearheaded, they would be dealing, not with the toxic legacy of a toxic industry, but with a continuing, profitable plunder of their country, spreading poison around the world.

All of which has got me thinking about Jerome Fitzgerald a bit over the past week. Despite his firm scepticism about our prospects, Jerome and many thousands like him were instrumental in the win at Jabiluka. The anti-uranium movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s was strong enough to ensure that the Labor government elected in 1983 had a policy of banning uranium mining. 

Bob Hawke sold out on that policy, along with so much else, initiating the notorious “three mines policy” that allowed Ranger to continue and Roxby Downs/Olympic Dam, the world’s second largest uranium mine, to open up and start spewing out its poison for Western Mining Corporation. That particular sell-out was felt all the more keenly because WMC was headed by Hugh Morgan, a notorious union-buster, opponent of land rights and, more recently, one of Australia’s most prominent climate change deniers. It summed up perfectly which side Labor was on—and still is today. (WMC was eventually bought by BHP, which still operates Olympic Dam.)

Demoralisation followed for many after Hawke’s sell-out, understandably. In my opinion, Jerome Fitzgerald’s cynicism about the prospects of ordinary people changing the world was a direct result of Labor’s betrayals of the 1980s. Nevertheless, the movement had put limits on the spread of uranium mining and established a baseline suspicion of the nuclear industry that we were able to draw on twenty years later when organising against Jabiluka. Without Jerome Fitzgerald and his 10,000 metalworkers in the 1970s and 1980s, we would never have been able to fight and win twenty years later.

So a salute to Yvonne Margarula and the Mirarr people, who fought for 40 years against incredible odds, and to the kids of the time of the blockade who are now the next generation to fight. To Jacqui Katona who played a crucial role at the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, the Mirarr people’s organisation. To Gary Foley, Gundjeihmi’s link person here in Melbourne. To Dave Sweeney at the Australian Conservation Foundation. To Saro, Bruce, Albert Araya and the whole crew at Friends of the Earth. To Loretta Jane, Hillel Freedman, Fleur Taylor and the many, many people who passed through the Jabiluka Action Group here in Melbourne. We stood on a platform constructed by Jerome Fitzgerald, Sandra Bloodworth, tens of thousands of unionists and so many others. 

We made a bit of history, and still have a world to win.

Read more:

https://redflag.org.au/node/7518

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The cost of rehabilitating a decommissioned uranium mine in Kakadu national park could blow out by $1.2bn, in what is becoming the single largest repair exercise in the history of Australian mining.

Former uranium miner Energy Resources of Australia shut down the mine last January and since then has been racing against the clock to complete the work before the 2026 deadline.

ERA severely underestimated the cost of rehabilitation, initially putting a $973m price tag on the project.

But on Wednesday the company announced it would cost between $1.6bn and $2.2bn to repair the mine site.

Mirarr senior traditional owner Yvonne Margarula welcomed greater certainty of the true cost of Ranger’s clean-up.

“Ranger has operated on our country for over 40 years. I have been waiting for this nearly all my life,” Margarula said.

“ERA and Rio Tinto promise me that everything will be cleaned up properly, but I am worried that the government has forgotten that it put this mine here in the first place.

“This is going to cost someone a lot more money now and we need to know the government has not forgotten its promises to Aboriginal people.”

The timing of the project has also blown out, as ERA announced the project would now take until 2028 – two years longer than it is legally allowed.

ERA’s lease stipulates it must complete the clean-up by 2026, a condition that is backed by the Atomic Energy Act 1953.

In a statement to the ASX the company said it would work with the government to try to change the legislation – a proposal that has the support of The Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, which represents the traditional owners.

“ERA has been engaging with government and key stakeholders to amend the [Act] and extend the expiry date of ERA’s tenure on the Ranger Project Area,” the statement said.

In light of the blowout, ERA said it was “currently reviewing all available funding options to ensure that the increased forecast cost of the rehabilitation of the Ranger Project Area will be adequately funded.”

In a statement ERA’s parent company, Rio Tinto, said it is “committed to working with [ERA] to ensure the rehabilitation of the Ranger Project Area is successfully achieved to a standard that will establish an environment similar to the adjacent Kakadu national park”.

CEO of GAC, Justin O’Brien, said the Australian government must now expedite passage of legislative amendments to provide ERA with continued access to the Ranger site beyond January 2026.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/03/cost-to-rehabilitate-kakadu-uranium-mine-site-could-blow-out-by-12bn

Uranium energy ain't cheap...

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FREE HIM!

One of the world's biggest mine clean-ups is happening on the edge of Kakadu National Park. It's a high stakes operation where failure could be 'cataclysmic'.

Out of the surface of a cracked moonscape, a tiny sapling is stretching towards the light.

"Yam," says Peter 'Christo' Christophersen, identifying the species, as he cradles its leaf in his palm.

On the surrounding plateau, dozens more stand waving in the breeze, which hits hot as a hair dryer's blast.

These shoots are among 1.1 million new trees a mining company promises will be planted at this rocky wasteland in the Top End.

The 500-hectare site is a former uranium mine in the early throes of rehabilitation.

The task ahead is gargantuan.

To restore this mothballed operation, the size of 200 MCG playing fields, to a level befitting one of Australia's most treasured natural wonders.

To safely bury 65 million tonnes of contaminated scraps, mining silos and machinery, without poisoning the surrounding ecosystems of Kakadu National Park.

And to convince wary traditional owners that their cultural values won't be ignored as they were, profoundly, when the Ranger Uranium Mine was first established.

"The consequences of not getting it right, they're sort of cataclysmic," says Justin O'Brien, the chief executive of Kakadu's Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation.

In Australia's far north, where nothing ever comes cheap or easy, the precarious balancing act to try and repair Ranger, and the relationships shattered by its creation, is underway.

So far, more than 30,000 native seeds have been sown by hand.

Mr Christophersen, a gardener from the nearby town of Jabiru, is an expert on native plants.

He is leading the revegetation efforts, along with his daughter Delise.

For both of them, these saplings are a sign of rebirth.

READ MORE:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-19/kakadu-ranger-uranium-mine-rehabilitation/101147762

HERE IS A 1977 PLAN FOR THE REHABILITATION OF THE MINE:

READ AND SEE GUS'S PICTURE FROM TOP.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE....