August 2024 Newsletter – Tea Treat, Nimby’s Corner and More

Tea Treat 2024

This year’s annual Tea Treat was thankfully not marred by high winds as it was in 2023. In fact, it was a wonderful summer’s day! (Yes, what is one of those?!)

We had a great attendance this year for the Tea Treat itself with folk music provided during the day procession and evening ceilidh music from the Rosevilles, kids games, lots of lovely cakes and of course saffron buns! The evening Ceilidh rounded off a perfect traditional summers’ day event.

Our thanks to the village hall and all the wonderful volunteers who made the day such a success! Thanks also to Dave Harrison for permission to use Trew Green.

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Nimby’s Corner

As promised in July’s Nimby’s Corner, we want to focus on water and why the threat of mining in Breage Parish is of concern.

In most areas of the world there is concern over minings’ over abundant use of water. but here in Breage that is not the only problem. In the absence of any groundwater, Cornwall relies on surface water. As we know, this causes restrictions on usage during dry summers. Of course our domestic supply is protected by filtration.

Of course our domestic supply is protected by filtration. However, one of the problems we face is the gradual acidification of untreated surface and groundwater in the Parish from mining activity dating back centuries. Both these sources of increasingly acidic water have a knack of altering the chemical structure of earth’s minerals leading to dire consequences for species depletion, both inland and at sea causing long term harm to our environment. This is already the case at Wheal Vor. The Environment Agency has highlighted this problem many times but lacks the resources for any remedial actions.

Any new successful mining operations in Breage will only accelerate the situation no matter how carefully the planning authority try to regulate the miners.

So what are the specific water related issues pertaining to Breage Parish?

• New underground mines will require substantial investment in de-watering. The larger the investment the greater the risk of commercial failure. We should bear in mind that the South Crofty project lying just nine miles away is planning to produce enough tin by 2027 to easily cater for the UK’s annual consumption. By way of illustration South Crofty’s latest preliminary economic assessment shows a provision of $14 million for dewatering.
• The long history of mining of Copper and Tin in Breage largely concluded by the end of the 19th Century left the parish honeycombed with abandoned mines, boreholes and tailings – the locations of many of which have been lost in the mists of time. Surveying the location and profile of these old workings cannot be 100% guaranteed as any responsible mining engineer will admit. A potential catastrophic break out of water into newly excavated mine workings remains an issue.
• The proximity of the extensive and valuable holiday area of Porthleven lying no more than three kilometres downstream of the likely portal exit of the Cornish Tin project would significantly detract from the desirability of the area. Any flooding event upstream would have an immediate and powerful impact in this neighbourhood.
• Both the Cornish Tin and the Godolphin projects are designated as underground mines although the latest bulletin from Cornish Tin infers an additional secondary Lithium hard rock mine project, possibly by way of open cast activity although it is hard to believe they would be granted permission for this in such an area as ours. In both underground projects the tailings are left underground and used to infill the voids created by the extraction. It is considered a highly complex operation with a very real risk of making water contamination worse by inadequate stabilising paste with the further risks associated with diverting the course of water flow. We remember the problems caused by concretions of mine waste used to make building slabs (so called Mundic blocks) during the 1950s and 1960s.

These are just some of the issues that surround protecting the quality of our water against mining activity.

With the uncertain future consequences of climate change, we strongly believe that all mineral extraction activities should be suspended and subjected to the most rigorous evidence based scrutiny unless they are based on existing infrastructures.

In the next edition of Nimby’s Corner we take a look at the economic issues surrounding the creation of a new tin mine in Breage.

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Local News and Events

Woodland Wellbeing Day at Lottie’s Farm Tuesday 27th August 10am – 15.30pm

Many members of the local community came to the first tree planting event in March and helped plant nearly 500 trees. Plant One CIC are returning on the 27th August to check on the success of the planting and help the small trees with a little weeding. If you would like to get involved and see the progress come along at 10am.