Operating mines

Tenement holders are responsible for monitoring their own compliance and demonstrating compliance to their stakeholders through public reporting and engagement. DEM staff conduct compliance activities to provide assurance to the government, industry, community and other stakeholders that companies are being regularly monitored and are adhering to all relevant obligations. All major mines and other mining operations in South Australia are subject to regular scheduled and ad hoc site inspections.

The changes to the Mining Act in January 2021 introduced new requirements for all extractive and industrial mining operations in South Australia to submit an annual compliance report. These compliance reports, which are publicly available, provide a summary of the tenement holder's compliance with its obligations.

In 2021–22 DEM officers conducted 338 inspections and attended 13 community meetings.

Details on mining compliance can be found in the Mining compliance section of the DEM website:

• Mining compliance in South Australia

Table 11: Summary of mineral tenements and operating mines - 30 June 2022

Note: These figures exclude opal mining tenements which are summarised separately.

Since 2019 the number of inspections has been impacted by COVID-19 related travel restrictions and associated resourcing constraints.

Note: Compliance inspections include routine inspections as well as site meetings, responding to complaints and incidents, and ad hoc inspections. Tenement inspections include renewals, surrender and transfer inspections. Assessment inspections include new mineral applications and mining programs.

Figure 15: DEM mining and exploration inspections by region FY2021–22

Table 12: Status of ongoing community consultative committees - 30 June 2022

Table 13: Compliance-related activities for mining operations FY2021–22

Mining complaints

The most common mining complaints received in 2021–22 are:

• Dust – 14
• Blasting – 9
• Water quality – 9

Blasting and dust complaints are typically received from mining operations located adjacent to residential areas. These operations are expected to continuously focus on minimising external impacts, with many adopting real-time technologies to monitor blasting and dust events, trigger and response plans and transparent reporting systems.

Many of these operations also have well-established community engagement programs to ensure local communities are informed of developments and regulatory performance.

Mining incidents

The most common incident types recorded in 2021–22 were:

• Spills – 11
• Dust – 6
• Water quality – 3

All reportable incidents under the Mining Act must be reported to DEM. 24 incidents were reported on mining tenements. Four of these were uranium or radiation-related incidents.

More information about the types of incidents that must be reported, and how and when can be found ono the Incident reporting page of the DEM website:

• Incident reporting

Mining operations enforcement actions

Table 14: Enforcement actions issued, outstanding or closed for mining operations FY2021–22

Note: Includes outstanding directions issued prior to 30 June 2021 that were completed or remained outstanding at 30 June 2022.