The land reclamation process at the open-pit coal mine started back
in 2009 and the company is convinced that it will be done by 2020, as
its own workforce is in charge of re-profiling the terrain using seven
large bulldozers. Only this year, 380 hectares of land are expected to
be recuperated.
Millennium is located 160 kilometres south-west of Mackay, a city in
the northeastern Queensland state. The mine sits atop the Bowen Basin
-which has the largest coal reserves in Australia- and it produced 2.8
million tonnes of marketable mineral in 2017. Operations are currently
being ramped down as mid-2019 has been set as the date when the mine
will reach the end of its active life.
“We talk to a range of stakeholders, including the landowner, to get
their input on what is most useful after mining,” Peabody Australia
President, George Schuller Jr., said in a media statement.
“The land needs to continue to be productive so we check things like
what type of seed we should use for revegetation and best location for
roads, water dams for stock and infrastructure.”
After hearing this news, industry association Queensland Resources Council sent out a press release
praising Peabody’s work and highlighting the efforts taken by mining
firms operating in the state to adhere to high environmental standards.
The group’s CEO, Ian Macfarlane, said Peabody is a good example of
responsible performance as is Glencore (LON:GLEN), a company that
recently received an environmental certification from the Queensland
Government for the rehabilitation of 220 hectares of land at its
Rolleston open-cut coal mine south of Emerald.
“Queensland’s resources industry has a proven track record of
attracting new investment and creating new jobs because of the clear and
stable regulatory environment in which it operates. We look forward to
further investment in the resources sector which benefits every
Queenslander through the industry’s contribution to the budget bottom
line,” Macfarlane said in the brief.