Environment
Kimberley Mineral Sands respects the land we work on and we are committed to minimising our impact on the environment.
Environmental Compliance
Environmental compliance is governed by the Board and guided by requirements stated in Ministerial Statement 1080 for the Thunderbird Mineral Sands Project, which outlines that at a minimum KMS will ensure that all procedures comply with all applicable environmental laws and regulations, which includes annual reporting of our greenhouse gas emissions and public availability of all environmental plans, reports, and data. The Company also reports to the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) annually on aquifer and groundwater abstraction volumes.
We uphold stringent control measures on-site to safeguard our workplace environment and preserve the natural landscape. In compliance with our mining license for the Thunderbird project, we are committed to detailed tracking and reporting the quantities of waste generated, disposed of and recycled.
To effectively monitor dust and noise, we have conducted baseline monitoring along the transport route from the mine to the Port of Broome prior to commencing operations. We are committed to conducting further assessments to enable us to better understand and mitigate any impacts as operations increase. Additional dust and noise monitoring is performed at the Port of Broome during shiploading.
Rehabilitation
Thunderbird is a typical dry-mining mineral sand operation whereby a moving void extracts the valuable mineral sands, with waste materials returned to the void enabling progressive rehabilitation of the area. Topsoil and overburden are excavated and transported using truck and excavator. Ore is excavated, screened, slurried and then pumped to the nearby Wet Concentrator Plant (WCP).
Retaining cells are constructed in the developed mine void for the return of process tails. Topsoil is returned in a continuous rehabilitation process. As the mining void is established, increasing amounts of overburden are mined and then directly returned to the mining void as backfill.
Image (c) Minerals Council 2020
