MMG and the environmentalist Bob Brown Foundation are at loggerheads over MMG's proposed Rosebery tailings storage facility development at South Marionoak, which the BBF opposes..

The company says it needs a new tailings storage solution if the mine and its 500 jobs are to survive.

The BBF has suggested alternatives, including paste fill, which involves storing tailings underground in previously mined areas.

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MMG has denied paste fill is an option for Rosebery.

"The option of a paste fill facility at the Rosebery Mine has been thoroughly explored over many years and ruled out due to a combination of environmental, geological, operational and extreme safety constraints," it said in 2021.

"The 85-year-old underground mine is not designed to cope with paste fill and doing so would destabilise mine workings and place our workforce at direct risk of harm."

BBF Tarkine campaigner Scott Jordan on Tuesday described MMG's comments about safety as mythology and suggested its reluctance to embrace the paste fill method was more about cost.

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"The reality is the paste fill that would occur going forward wouldn't be filling 85-year-old workings," he said.

He said it would be deeper underground, in more recently mined areas.

Mr Jordan said paste fill increased safety, partly because it stopped underground voids collapsing.

Not far away, Mallee Resources Limited - the owner of the restarted Avebury Nickel Mine - is backfilling mined areas underground through a process called cemented rock fill (CRF), involving a mixture of mined waste rock and cement.

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Mallee Resources said the cement for its CRF process came from the Mine-Crete batch plant at Zeehan.

It said it was being delivered to the mine during the day.

"To keep up with our mining schedule, we require CRF on night shift as well, which means we will require that cement be delivered to site during night shift," Mallee said.

It was seeking approval for night-time movements of cement from the EPA and the West Coast Council.

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