With 668 submissions to respond to before the end of February 2020, Regis Resources staff in Blayney are looking at a very short Christmas break.
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Of those 668 submissions 623 were from individuals, 27 from organisations and 18 were from public authorities.
From the 623 individual submissions there are 210 supporting the mine, 35 classed as comments and 378 that object to it.
Regis Resources Manager Special Projects, Tony McPaul said his team were now beginning the task of sorting through the submissions and responding to them.
"We've only been able to have a quick look at them so far, but the main thing is that there are no real surprises in them which is good news," he said.
Mr McPaul said that until they sift through all the submissions they're not sure of the workload ahead of them.
"In some cases people may not have found the information in the EIS so it will be a matter of referring them to a section in the EIS or there will be other areas where more work needs to be done," he said.
Of the 18 government agencies that made submissions regarding the mine they were all submitted as comments only, and many were requesting extra information.
Mr McPaul said that on balance equal weight would be given to responding to individuals and agencies.
There are 117 supporting the mine from the local area and 106 objections from the local area.
- Tony McPaul
"You would expect though that submissions from the agencies would be after more technical sort of data because they have specialists in those fields that go through the EIS," he said.
The most heartening statistic for Mr McPaul was the comparison between supporters and opponents within the Blayney community.
"There are 117 supporting the mine from the local area and 106 objections from the local area," he said.
"You have to go outside the area to get up to that 378 that object."
President of Belubula Headwaters Protection Group Dan Sutton said that the submissions from surrounding councils, residents and agencies shows the impact goes beyond Blayney.
"We're now reading the submissions made by local councils, the RMS, NSW Water, EPA and others as we're (able) to discover what issues they've raised and what they're saying should be done to prevent known issues and risks."
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