Miners are wary of a new rehabilitation strategy being developed claiming it is premature and that consultants need to do more research before pen is put to paper.
However farmers have cautiously welcomed the new strategy.
R W Corkery and Co, a consultancy company from Orange, has been appointed by the Department of Mineral Resources to develop a strategy that would incorporate all stakeholders' interests.
Corkery and Co's principal Rob Corkery said the strategy would aim to analyse rehabilitation because at present it wasn't being done properly: "We've got to look for new ways."
Following a three-day meeting and tour of the Lightning Ridge opal fields last week, where Corkery and Co met with all relevant stakeholders, a draft report outlining recommendations is expected to be forwarded to the Department of Mineral Resources next week.
"All individual miners, landholders, the LRMA and GGSMA all appeared to be making positive contributions and everyone wanted to see rehabilitation improved," Mr Corkery said.
He also said the department had wanted to put into place a strategy to be able to enforce a standard, but he said what was not clear yet was where that standard lay.
"We don't feel it is appropriate to fill up holes with metre-high ant hills of opal dirt, so there are some practices that are not good enough."
Mr Corkery said the strategy was a two-stage process.
"First of all we need to ensure each claim is safe by backfilling or exploding holes and shafts.
"All rubbish needs to be removed as well, and the top layer of red dirt needs to be scraped back so when the hole is backfilled it could be covered with that layer."
He said stage two would be the next step for the department to re-establish vegetation on the site in conjunction with the landholder.
Mr Corkery said it was most important for that land to no longer be used for mining so it could be rehabilitated by the landholder to use, because up until now miners had just been finding new fields on that land.
But LRMA director Bob Barrett said it seemed the strategy was misdirected.
"The LRMA has been pushing for some years now to get a rehabilitation levy in place so we have a pool of money which we could rehabilitate with.
"But I don't believe Corkery and Co are ready to write up a useful strategy yet."
Mr Barrett said he had always looked at the Department of Land and Water Conservation's (DLWC) guidelines to see what should be done to land that had been mined.
"Corkery and Co's strategy, however, seems to be contradicting what they (DLWC) have in place and what is currently happening.
"I think the strategy is premature, they (Corkery and Co) only spent half a day with the local landholders, who have had their say, and while we have had some say, I don't believe our input has been taken quite seriously enough.
"They spoke to the LRMA and all the mining and landholder representatives, but they haven't consulted with the council or Department of Land and Water Conservation yet."
Meanwhile, the Landholders' Protection Association secretary Leon Kravino said farmers were desperate for rehabilitation to be addressed properly.
"It is currently non-existent.
"No in-depth rehabilitation has been done on the opal fields, only bits here and there because it has been too expensive."
Mr Kravino said while he believed miners had a right to mine; they had an obligation not to degrade the land.
"Not one landholding within the Narran-Warrambool Reserve has been fully rehabilitated and restored yet."
Mr Kravino said the present method where rehabilitation was meant to be carried out after a mineral lease had ceased operations would never happen, because there would always be a new method of mining.
"About 10 per cent of mines are used again, when there is a new method because they weren't fully mined initially, so when would the field be rehabilitated?"
He said he believed Corkery and Co's method would only work if the department enforced regulations.
Mr Kravino said it was also important that a sunset clause be incorporated, because many claims registered were never being mined at all:
"People just want to live there and have a holiday home, when they should be working it, because that was its original purpose."
"Claim holders should only be given five years to live on a claim and mine it, so that rehabilitation can take place afterwards."
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