About 90 people attended DMP’s Women in Mining event on 24 July.
| Date: | Friday, 31 July 2015 |
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The Mining Rehabilitation Fund (MRF) took centre stage at a Women in Mining event held by the Department of Mines and Petroleum (DMP) on Friday 24 July.
About 90 people attended the networking event and heard DMP Manager Environmental Reform Sarah Bellamy present on the development, implementation and success of the world-first policy.
Ms Bellamy said the event was a fantastic opportunity to share a positive DMP initiative with industry.
“The MRF has many positive impacts for the environment, industry and the community,” she said.
“Implementation planning and engaging with stakeholders through all stages of the process was crucial to the MRF’s success and continues to be extremely important moving forward.”
Under the MRF, mining tenement holders operating under the Mining Act 1978 must report annual disturbance data, which is used to calculate their levy payments.
2014-15 was the second compulsory reporting year for the MRF.
“One of the many great things about the MRF is it allows us to collect information about the Western Australian mining industry that we’ve never had available before,” Ms Bellamy said.
“Because of MRF data we now know the environmental footprint cast by the mining industry, and we’ll be able to track how it changes over time.
“It is extremely exciting that in just the second year after the MRF was implemented we can see there’s seven per cent more land under rehabilitation than there was in the first year.
“This shows that industry is really embracing the MRF and understands that engaging in early rehabilitation will reduce levy payments.”
Attendees also heard about the abandoned mines project the department is currently undertaking.
“The department has just released a draft abandoned mines policy which will establish a framework to support decisions being made about the State’s many legacy abandoned mine sites,” Ms Bellamy said.
“We have selected four pilot sites for rehabilitation work using the interest raised on the MRF.
“Work on these pilot sites provide detailed information that will be shared with industry to improve rehabilitation standards as well as contribute to the review of the MRF that’s currently scheduled for 2017.”
DMP Director General Richard Sellers said the department was proud to support Women in Mining WA and share the lessons learnt from the MRF with members and guests.
“These events provide a great opportunity to share innovative new initiatives with our industry colleagues while encouraging an increased presence of women in the resources industry,” Mr Sellers said.
Development, implementation and positive outcomes of MRF shared with industry.
