Cultural heritage
Our Aboriginal cultural heritage team, together with Traditional Owners and external specialists, collectively spent over 1000 days managing cultural heritage across our sites
Our approach
The main function of the cultural heritage programme is to ensure we meet our internal, statutory and community obligations with respect to the consultation, identification, assessment, protection and management of Aboriginal cultural heritage and enable access to land for development activities for all RTCA operations, projects and lands
2010 activity
During 2010 heritage activities maintained excellent safety standards recording no lost time or medical treatment injuries. 2010 saw the continued expansion of on and off-site heritage management activities associated with on going risk management requirements, ground disturbance permits, and several project development and operational expansion programmes.
In New South Wales, the heritage programme participated in a number of major projects including the Warkworth Mine Extension Environmental Assessment, the Carrington West Wing Extension Environmental Assessment and the Mount Pleasant Project Modification Environmental Assessment. A key focus in New South Wales was the development of an Aboriginal cultural heritage conservation areas initiative in collaboration with the Coal & Allied Upper Hunter Valley Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Working Group involving the identification and assessment of more than 1200 hectares of RTCA owned lands as potential conservation areas.
In Queensland we continued to implement and maintain cultural heritage management agreements with our Traditional Owners associated with operations at Hail Creek Mine (Wiri People), Kestrel Mine (Kangoulu People) and Clermont Region (Wangan & Jagalingou Peoples). We also entered into an exploration agreement with the Barada Barna People who are the Traditional Owners of the lands within the Winchester South exploration project area. Our heritage operations worked collaboratively with Rio Tinto Exploration to manage the cultural heritage processes associated with the Mount Robert and Lake Elphinstone exploration drilling projects in Queensland.
During 2010 we maintained a minimum five year Aboriginal cultural heritage assessment buffer (baseline assessments) and three year mitigation buffer based on planned project and operation land access requirements for all projects and current operations. A Rio Tinto cultural heritage management standard audit was conducted for the Clermont Region operations (Clermont Mine and Blair Athol Mine) in September 2010.
During 2010 there was one breach of statutory requirements for the management of Aboriginal cultural heritage involving the unauthorised disturbance of a heritage site at Hunter Valley Operations. The breach was fully investigated and mine ground disturbance procedures reviewed to mitigate the risk of such an unauthorised disturbance from reoccurring. Five low or moderate incidents involving non-conformances with cultural heritage management procedures were reported during 2010. These did not result in disturbance of Aboriginal cultural heritage. To address these non-conformances, procedural requirements were revised and reinforced with site personnel through general and specific inductions, supervisor training, toolbox discussions and procedural and management system improvements.
Cultural heritage statistics/activity
| 2009 | 2010 | |
|---|---|---|
| Number of heritage management mobilisations | 54 | 47 |
| Number of site work days | 177 | 144 |
| Aboriginal heritage management programme teams person days on site | 973 | 1211 |