Silver Mines pushing ahead with NSW Bowdens project despite green group setback over power lines

Silver Mines (ASX:SVL) will push ahead with its Bowdens Silver Mine after a Court of Appeal decision to uphold a local environment group’s administrative legal challenge.

A local land management group opposed to the project originally took issue with the NSW government’s planning division in that it had failed to properly consider the environmental impact of a transmission line on-site.

However, that same group has previously told ABC journalists that possible lead pollution is more of a concern. Lead and silver tend to coincide together.

While those concerns do merit some level of legal scrutiny, the company is now re-drafting a second application to go through the appropriate channels – one where Silver Mines Ltd intends not to be caught out again by an oversight of poles and wires.

“Silver Mines is urgently working towards the preparation and the submission of a new development application for the Project,” the company wrote on Wednesday.

“The New Development Application will include a defined power supply option.”

Silver Mines pointed to the uncertainty the Court of Appeal decision had created for shareholders and company representatives will now “be in regular consultation with key community stakeholders to reaffirm its support” for the project. Silver Mines estimates the project will create over 300 jobs.

The news is the latest in a flurry of recent landmark environmental decisions impacting resources projects.

The WA EPA blocked Woodside’s WA Browse project a fortnight ago, and since, Canberra has also rejected a Regis-led gold mine in the country’s east.

While Bowdens is a smaller project than both, it too is the latest to be ensnared in a small pocket of green-lens legal challenges nationwide.

SVL last traded at 10cps.