National uranium action day

National uranium action day

By Peter Boyle

SYDNEY — About 50 environmental activists picketed the head office of uranium mining company Energy Resources of Australia on July 25 as part of a national day of action in solidarity with the Mirrar/Gundjehmi — the traditional owners of the Jabiluka uranium mine site.

Pickets were set up at the mine site, all other capital cities, Lismore and Cairns.

Environmentalists and the traditional owners have rejected as unsatisfactory a recent supplementary environmental impact statement produced by ERA for the mine, which is in the Kakadu World Heritage Park.

The official "safeguards" promised in the EIS will be gone in 50 years, but the dangerous tailings will remain for hundreds of thousands of years, explained John Hallam, a spokesperson of Friends Of the Earth.

"We are calling upon the government to recognise that 'No' from the traditional owners means 'No', and to reject the entire Jabiluka project", said Hallam.

Environment groups say that the opposition of the traditional owners should be sufficient reason to refuse consent to the mine. The 1982 agreement under which ERA plans to proceed was signed under duress, and for a completely different project from the one now envisaged.

Environment minister Robert Hill will announce the government's decision on August 22.

Seventy students from a national student environment conference in Townsville also travelled to Mirrar lands last week to hear first hand their experience of 20 years of uranium mining. The Australian Student Environment Network set up out of the conference has responded to the request by the Mirrar people for support in their campaign.

From GLW issue 283