Dargues Reef Gold groundwater impact assessment

The Dargues Reef mine is located approximately 13 kilometres south of the township of Braidwood in New South Wales. The area has a long history of open cut and underground mines. The Dargues Reef Gold Project involved a proposed underground mine and tailings facility. We were engaged to complete a groundwater impact assessment to form part of the Environmental Impact Statement.

Client

R.W. Corkery & Co Pty Ltd on behalf of Big Island Mining Pty Ltd

Project

Dargues Reef Gold Project: groundwater impact assessment

Sector

Mining

Services

Field services, conceptual groundwater model, numerical groundwater model

Services we delivered

Services we delivered

The groundwater impact assessment involved:

  • development of a field investigation (i.e. bore installation, testing, and monitoring)
  • review of historic data in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the hydrogeological regime
  • development of the conceptual groundwater model
  • development of a numerical groundwater model to simulate natural groundwater processes and replicate system stresses (i.e. proposed and approved mining, private groundwater abstraction) to predict potential changes due to the project.

Subsequent work has including verifying the groundwater model using additional monitoring data and updating the calibration of the model.

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Our team’s expertise is in groundwater modelling, field services, approvals and licensing, water supply, contaminant investigation, expert advisory, and hydrogeochemistry. Learn more about our services by clicking the link below.