Correct me if I am wrong. I was made to believe that Lynas is an Australian chemical company (sort of) that refines rare earth, ridding of its bad elements (mostly traces of radio isotopes, poisons and other radioactive elements).

The refined earth is then taken back to the country of origin for manufacturing of various products.

I was made to understand that the residual or spent elements mentioned above are the responsibility of locals to dispose off and it is not known where or how they would bury these dangerous poisons.

The Australian Government does not allow this plant in their own land but they need the refined ores for to manufacture special purpose and sophisticated defense grade material.

The local are worried over the impact of not the refinery processing system but the spent rare earth itself.

If not properly managed, it could infiltrate into the underground water system and escape into canals and rivers which could surreptitiously mutates waterborne organisms into something dangerous and poisonous for humans.

We already have another 'silent killer' almost equally as bad at Gebang, Pahang namely MTBE (Methyl tertiary-butyl ether) ( http://www.epa.gov/chemfact/f_mtbe.txt ) which is a known poison that dilutes easily to ground water and has been banned or cautions issued by the US government.

Frighteningly, we now have another monster approaching and ready to clobber us left and right in the distant future.

From the economic point of view we have a healthy investment with injurious side-effects at the same time.

My personal concern as a local resident is the long-term impact of this project - in 10 or 100 years from now.

At the moment we see a lot of speculation and assumptions generated by NGO's and political speculators.

Lynas has yet to provide its proposed full specification of the raw material they desire to refine here and what are the spent materials (which is said to contain radioisotopes and other dangerous elements) that they wish to leave behind.

The question here is management of the spent materials itself. Do we need to spend more than 100 million per year (as Teras Kimia Sdn Bhd for example did in conducting molecular tagging of subsidised diesel)?

In other words, we do need monitoring expertise to let us know whether the environment is safe or otherwise, and have plans for all contingencies and eventualities.

The public must also be also educated on the spent poisonous materials in question and its implications and dangers to the local community.