Facility

BHP Olympic Dam Mine — Great Artesian Basin Water Supply (Roxby Downs, South Australia)

BHP's Olympic Dam mine (Roxby Downs, South Australia) is the world's largest known uranium deposit and a major copper/gold/silver producer. Olympic Dam operates in an arid region 560 km north of Adelaide, requiring an 18 km pipeline from the Gawler Craton to access the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) — the world's largest and deepest artesian groundwater basin, underlying ~22% of Australia (1.7 million km²). The GAB provides the only reliable water supply for the region; over-extraction has already reduced artesian pressure in many bores from free-flowing to requiring pumping. BHP's Olympic Dam is the single largest industrial user of GAB water. An expansion of Olympic Dam (repeatedly planned and deferred since 2011) would roughly triple GAB water demand from the mine. Source: https://www.bhp.com/what-we-do/projects-and-operations/our-operations/olympic-dam