Cadia goldmine operators fined $350,000 for breaches of NSW clean-air laws

 The operators of Cadia goldmine have been ordered to pay $350,000 in fines and convicted of three offences after a prosecution by the New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority.

Cadia Holdings Limited, trading as Cadia Valley Operations, pleaded guilty to three offences under the environmental protection act relating to breaches of clean air regulations at the mine in central west NSW.

Justice Sarah Pritchard handed down her judgment in the land and environment court on Monday.

The mine operator was fined $150,000 for offences in November 2021 and March 2022, and $200,000 for an offence in May 2023, but given a reduction in its penalty because of its guilty plea and other mitigating factors.

It must also pay the EPA’s legal costs, and cover the cost of installing a new “dust tracking system” in Mudgee.

Pritchard ordered that Newmont Australia, the owner of the mine, also had to publicise the ruling in a print advertisement in three newspapers, and on its Facebook and X accounts.

Newmont acquired the previous owner, Newcrest, in November 2023.

In a statement in response to the judgment, Newmont said it had fixed the issues which led to the breaches and had been in compliance with air quality standards since August 2023.

“We recognise that our actions fell short of regulatory standards and our own expectations,” it said.

“The health and safety of our environment, employees and surrounding communities are of utmost importance to us.”

The EPA began investigating the central-west mine in 2023 after a community-driven water testing program that found elevated levels of heavy metals in the rainwater tanks of some nearby residences.

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It subsequently found that these levels were caused by dust emissions. The mine operator was exceeding the standard concentration for solid particles being emitted from mine surface exhaust fans at its main vent, known as Ventilation Rise 8 (VR8).

In June 2023, the head of the NSW EPA criticised the operators of Australia’s largest goldmine for “completely unacceptable” levels of air pollution after testing revealed it was emitting more than 11 times the legal limit of dust containing heavy metals.

The EPA ordered the operators to take immediate action to reduce air pollution after they had provided preliminary air pollution test results to the EPA.

That report found that VR8, also known as the “crusher vent” because it extracts contaminated air from where the ore is crushed deep underground, was expelling between 200 and 570 milligrams per cubic metre of dust – more than 11 times the regulatory limit for air pollution.

This was despite a new ventilation system that included installing a bag house, which catches 1 tonne of dust an hour.

The EPA chief executive officer, Tony Chappel, said at the time that the level of pollution recorded in those test results was “completely unacceptable” and that the mine had fallen well short of its legal obligations to meet clean air standards.

“The clean air regulation states that for any point source of pollution, which that vent is, the maximum allowable standard of dust is 50 milligrams per cubic metre,” he said. “That’s the standard we’re talking about when we say they have to immediately comply.”