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The above certificate was awarded to Tech-Sol Resources Pty Ltd in recognition of good environmental practices by the Moorabool Shire Council. Under the management of Terry Delahunty, Tech-Sol Resources Pty Ltd cleaned up historical tailings, debris, artefacts and pollution that had been left behind, unreported or acknowledged, from the late 1800’s. Mr Delahunty, instigated the tests and subsequent cleanup operation prior commencement of the tailings operation. The cleanup operation was paid for by Tech-Sol Resourced with no funding from any government department.
Terry Delahunty, CEO of Steadfast Mining Services, has received a number testimonial letters from local residents, who are grateful for Mr Delahunty’s commitment to environmental protection and preservation during his tenure as managing director for Tech-Sol Resourced Pty Ltd.
The Full Story
By Terry Delahunty,
CEO Steadfast Mining Services
Steadfast Mining Serviced is committed to and (It’s CEO) has a track record of environmental protection and conservation; always aspiring to transcend industry norms, we strive for excellence in transparency, integrity and continual improvement.
Tailings from mining activity in the late 1800’s were not recognised at that time as being detrimental to the environment so the practice of the day was to discharge waste material into the nearest watercourse. This resulted in widespread pollution of towns and waterways in goldfields all around the world in the 1800’s. The most common pollutants were arsenic (occurring naturally within the gold ores) and mercury (used during the stamp battery gold recovery process).
In most cases these polluted areas are not life threatening (unless children or grazing animals actually eat the stuff), but they are highly undesirable additions to water courses and contribute significantly to poor surface water quality and can also make fish and yabbies unsafe to eat.
Many people will be aware that Tech-Sol Resources Pty Ltd conducted a tailings re treatment operation in the Mt Egerton area, mainly in the late 1990’s. I was the managing director of Tech-Sol Resources.
Tech-Sol Resources made the voluntary decision to remove all of the introduced tailings wherever we were permitted to excavate them, even though less than half of the material we removed was profitable to reprocess at that time. All in all we managed to clean up and safely store over 200,000 tons of tailings from the watercourse in the main valley at Mount Egerton.
The sole motivation for this voluntary and quite costly work was to be able to achieve a much cleaner environment as a direct result of our mining operations. (After all, there was never going to be a better opportunity to do such a clean up without incurring a very much higher cost, as we were already on site with the necessary equipment and we had also constructed a safe storage area where the material could be isolated from the environment).
There was a study conducted on behalf of the EPA and other Government bodies prior to the commencement of our tailings operation. (Dames & Moore Risk Assessment Study of Mine Tailings at Mount Egerton Victoria). This report documents in quite some detail the pollution problems in soil and water in the area. A link to a copy of that report is available on our site for anyone interested in reading it in full.
Prior to the commencement of our tailings operation, surface water arsenic contamination levels were commonly very high.
Surface water samples in the valley within our mining licence (MIN4422) taken prior to the commencement of Tech-Sol’s operations showed surface water readings as high as 2,800-ppb arsenic. (The World Heath Organisation currently recommends that drinking water should contain no more than 7-ppb arsenic.). This pre-mining surface water sampling was conducted after an unusually prolonged period of heavy rain that probably would have flushed the system to a significant extent. Much higher readings may have been obtained during drier periods when water residence times within the tailings were greatly increased.
Unlike normal natural drainage systems, rainwater falling in the catchment was actually percolating through saturated battery tailings for over a kilometre en route to the Bostock reservoir, which services Geelong. Surface flow was quite uncommon except at times of very heavy rainfall. (Fortunately, dilution from other sources en route to the reservoir meant that by the time water reached the reservoir it was below critical threshold levels). Areas of the tailings in the Mt Egerton valley exhibited periodic seeps and oozes, which were commonly foul smelling, very dark coloured and often exhibited the telltale iridescence associated with bacterial action. Bacterial action on heavy metals is believed to greatly increase the bioavailability of these elements.
The result of our work has been a dramatically cleaner local environment. In 2004 the Department of Human Services reviewed Barwon Water’s test data of water on our site, and in a report to our Environmental Review Committee concluded that the surface water in the valley was “now close to drinking water quality”..
Unfortunately, as it was outside of our Mining Licence area, we were not able to complete the removal of all of the historically produced tailings from the dam next to the main road, and consequently this area still has major problems. Perhaps, if, and only if, there is sufficient community support at some point for us to do so, we may be able to finish this work and clean that dam out properly at some future time.
As managing director of Tech-Sol Resources Pty Ltd, I was very proud to receive this award from Moorabool Shire Council, for recognition of valuable contributions to good environmental practice.
The judges for the awards included members from the local land care group, which made receiving the award even more appreciated.
Mt Egerton Resident Testimonials
