After about six months of community engagement, Santana Minerals is getting more job inquiries from the community than any other inquiries, with over 800 expressions of interest.
Santana Minerals has been heading the Bendigo-Ophir gold project near Tarras for a few years and is now looking to finalise its fast-track application by next month.
The company has been hosting regular community drop-in sessions in Cromwell and Tarras since September last year.
Last October, Santana Minerals released a statement assuring people that community engagement was a priority.
The sessions were designed to be an open platform for the local community to give feedback, as the company shared the impact studies it has been conducting since 2018.
They were mostly held on a weekly basis last year, in both the Cromwell and Tarras offices, but are now becoming monthly.
The sessions presented community members with the latest information, as well as being a space to ask questions about the almost 10-year-long mining operation.
Chief executive Damien Spring said the community sessions had been successful, with most locals coming in to see what opportunities the company had to offer.
"It’s a good opportunity for people to ask questions.
"Most of them have been inquiring for work," he said.
Engagement manager Vicki Blakeborough said they were thrilled to have received over 800 expressions of interest from community members since they started the community engagement sessions.
"We put a form up, it would have been about September, and we’ve got an email address as well, so it’s been overwhelming. We’ve also had a huge amount of people come in who live here but they do fly in and fly out."
Some of the expressions of interest have been from community members, who also live elsewhere, such as Australia, on a part-time basis.
Other community members have been coming in with employment inquiries, including technical workers, truck drivers and a range of individuals, or businesses looking to be involved in the major project.
The company is looking to expand its community sessions to Wanaka and potentially Queenstown, as it receives interest from all over the region.
Ms Blakeborough said they also get questions about accommodation in relation to the work queries.
The company is planning to organise a camp very close to the mining site in Tarras for the construction period, however once the operational part of the mine is complete, it wants to encourage long-term workers to settle in neighbouring towns.
To assist with transport from nearby towns, Santana Minerals is planning to create several bus routes from Wanaka, Queenstown, Cromwell, Alexandra and Omakau to drop people off at the mining site.
Aside from questions around employment, Ms Blakeborough, said they do get occasional questions about ecological impacts, but not as much as anticipated.
"I thought we would get a lot more questions about the ecology ... once or twice you’ll get people who, if that’s their area, they’ll ask questions, but the general public doesn’t really seem to ask that many," Ms Blakeborough said.
Any environmental questions from the public were usually focused on water in relation to the tailings dam the company was planning to build as part of its operation.
Ms Blakeborough said the dam would be used to store the mineral waste that resulted after gold extraction.
The waste collected in tailings dams are often very toxic.
Santana Minerals said it aimed to limit environmental impacts by locating the dam within tight schist rock that was less permeable and therefore had less chance of seeping into the ground.
The company is still completing its impact studies as it looks to finalise its fast-track application next month. — APL
