Across north western Victoria, massive critical minerals developments threaten farming, landscapes, local economies and ground and water supplies. 

There are five main projects currently planned. More than 42,000 hectares of farm land are currently under retention licences. There are also legacy issues from older projects, which have not been properly rehabilitated. 

Key concerns about these projects:

·      Each mineral sand mine will consume hundreds of hectares of high production cereal farm land. This land will be lost to production forever. There is no feasible method to restore mine pits back to cereal production.

·      At most locations the mining companies will extract millions of tonnes of saline groundwater. There will also be direct demands on very limited surface water supplies – for instance, Taylors Lake, which is critical for Horsham’s water supply will be impacted by the proposed WIM 150 projects

·      There will be direct environmental impacts from these mines, for instance, loss of remnant vegetation

·      Mining companies often leave radioactive tailings dumps on the surface.

Each of these projects are subject to an assessment and approvals process. However, local farming communities feel that the assessment system is broken, ignores their concerns and allows approval of destructive projects. And there has been no attempt by the regulator or the state government to understand the cumulative impacts of these projects combined across an important food production area.

We call on the state government to announce an immediate halt on any further assessment or approval of any aspect of critical minerals projects until there has been an independent and comprehensive analysis done of the cumulative impacts of these projects.

We urge all political parties and candidates running in the November state election to pledge their support for an immediate halt of further development of critical minerals.