To Whom it may concern
I am a farmer that has lived in and around Mudgee for the majority of my life. I currently live in Mudgee and travel out to our on the Hayes Gap Road every day. I love riding horses, working dogs and growing healthy clean high-quality beef and wool for the population to consume. I am not one to object to all mines and I am not anti-development because I love a strong community with a low unemployment rate but I do object to Bowdens Silver Mine. If this mine goes ahead its going to put the local and wider community at great health and economic risk. These being lead dust, tourism down turn, the tailings dam, the pipeline and the water consumption.

The lead dust is defiantly a concern to me but I feel it should be a concern to the wider community. I do understand that lead is a valued material and it needs to be mined but it has it risks in a highly populated area. The boarder of the mine is only 2 km from the Lue school. The international guide lines is 5km and from the test of lead travelling out of the Broken Hill mine is quite concerning and taking to account that kids absorbed as much as 50% of the lead that they come into contact with. It has also been said that there is no safe level of lead to be consumed. This is a great concern to me and my family and I feel it should be concerning for any family in the Mudgee region. I say this because the trucks fill with lead are going to be driving through Mudgee, Wellington and over to Parks. Even if the tucks are sealed which I’m sure will be a requirement. I’m concerned about the dust that lands on the trucks while being loaded at the mine and then blown off on the commute to Parkes. Is every truck going to be washed of lead before it leaves the mine and past my home?

The most concerning factor to me is the water. Knowing first-hand how scarce it became during the most recent drought. Farmers within the region were selling their stock because they had run out of water. Bowden’s Silver projected that they will use 2050 mega litres year and pump 780 litres of that is going to come from the Lawson creek valley. A fully grown lactating cow can drink up to 120 litres on a hot summer’s day. If Bowden’s silver were watering cattle with all at water, they would be able to water 46666 lactating cows in total in the middle of summer. The water pulled from the Lawson creek valley would water 17808 lactating cows alone. To put that into perspective the avg cattle herd size in Australia is 276. Bowden’s will use enough water to water 169 avg size cattle farms. 17% of the water is going to come from Ulan mine which will be piped to Lue. I’m strongly opposed to this pipeline because it is going to run through our family farm. This water that is projected to run through the pipeline has already been put through to processing system at Ulan which makes it very dirty and solicit. This makes it a risk for us to burden on top of which having a pipeline is going to devalue our farm with no compensation.

Mudgee at the moment is quite a tourist hot spot and it getting promoted at clean and green. If the tailings dam gets put in there is a very high risk that it is going to leak. There has been no successful tailing dam made at this scale. If it leaks it will run directly into the Lawson creek and down to Mudgee. One of the chemicals that is going to be stored in the tailings dam is cyanide. I feel that it’s a pretty big risk for my home town. If the dam is to fail or it starts to get known that there is a dam full of cyanide up stream of Mudgee it will has great effect on the local tourism greatly. Which will be mostly small businesses.

In summary Bowden’s silver are wanting to mine Lue for a short 16 years which is a very short term gain with an extremely high risk for the community which I do not feel comfortable with because I don’t think it is the right thing for our community.
Regards
Nick White