Tomingley Gold Extension Project

WesTrac NSW supports this project - please refer to our attached letter of support.

I am concerned about the lack of focus by Government in the approvals of SSD's and in particular minerals developments. Approvals can take many years in New South Wales much longer than any other States in Australia. This is the principal reason why New South Wales is rated very low in world rankings when it comes to mine development approvals. We can cut the red tape and at the same time maintain the socio-economic and environmental integrity of the approvals and projects. The Independent Planning Commission (IPC) process is a problem. This system has the Government side stepping its responsibilities to an unelected IPC panel of 2 or 3 who have limited experience in the mining sector. With the demise of coal over the coming decades it is extremely important that other minerals come to the forefront in the State's development. How else is Government going to fill this major revenue and jobs gap that is looming?
Alkane is a good Company and Tomingley is a good project. We need more projects like this. With its approval it provides much greater incentives for Alkane to look to the larger Boda project development that also located in New South Wales.

Our family has been vocal in our lack of support for this project during the whole process. We will be the closest affected neighbours to the project and have significant concerns that we will continue to raise.
The road that we currently live on and access the Newell Highway daily for commutes to work, shopping and church is the very road that this project extension will be closing so they can proceed. The project does include our road being diverted to a new location, however it was only after numerous emails to our local council and finally a mamber of Alkane that we were even brought into any discussions about this. It took months of zero communication before someone made the decision to even speak to us.
We were part of the eventual consultation however it is difficult to believe that anything we requested or suggested was truly taken into account as we believe wholeheartedly that all decisions had already been made.
We are extremely concerned about the noise impact we will face over the lifetime of this project. Both in the construction phase as well as the actual operation. The area we live in has only a handful of residences, so therefore very little noise. Hundreds of acres between residences. However we can already hear drilling at certain times of the night especially as well as feel the impact underneath our home of blasting.
Our home is approximately 90 years old, I do not wish to have to make repairs unnecessarily to my home due to blast impacts. We do not have the benefit of double brick walls, insulation or double glazed windows to keep the noise impacts as low as possible.
We are very concerned about the potential lack of sleep and how this will affect our mental health for the life of the project.
I have looked at the current Tomingley Gold Porjects website, in particular the listings of complaints from residences with the older mine. The majority of complaints were directly in regard to noise. I can see in my research that most of the solutions from TGP were just to say that the noise levels fell within the rules of operation.
I am concerned that the lack of regard for genuine complaints may be a large factor in the relationship between residents and the operators of the mine.
How can they truly respond and assist with these concerns. Noise monitors have been suggested, however are they checked independently of the mine operations or are they intending to monitor these with their own staff? How can we be assured that the results of monitoring are truly to ensure the lowest impact on our wellbeing and home or will the operators just continue to 'tick boxes'.
It is difficult for us to believe that this Public Exhibition is anything more than just going through the motions. As stated before, we seem to be the last to find things out and this step is happening at the very same time we already can see surveyor flags and vehicles marking out the expected new route of the Kyalite Road entrance to the Newell Highway, as well as marking out the Newell Highway realignment. So the residents in the area, it looks like the mine already has all the approvals. That this project already is on the go, and that regardless of any of our concerns, things will be moving ahead.
We do not want to see gold mines continue to seek development, drilling rights or more on perfectly beautiful agricultural land. The potential to de-value all the surrounding land is also a major concern. Land values play a large part in our equity position with finance institutions.
Thank you for the opportunity to share just a handful of our concerns.
As stated in the beginning, we are against this project moving forward.

Thank you for the ‘notice of exhibition’ regarding the Tomingley Gold Extension Project.
The mine is some 25 klms south of the Dubbo LGA boundary and as such, raises no direct concerns, noting that any traffic concerns would be likely addressed by Transport for NSW being located on the Newell Highway.