Coal News No. 10
Why does Solid Energy (SE) trash the environment so brazenly? Why does the Department Of Conservation tremble at the knees when confronted with a SE demand? Why do we have to launch a save-the-kiwi campaign when kiwi are supposed to be protected in Aotearoa/NZ?
A look at the history of the mining industry gives some answers.
Gold and coal mining have always been big players. In the 1860’s, for example, the West Coast went from a few hundred to 20,000 people almost overnight. Goldrush towns like Hokitika and Charleston were bigger than early Wellington.
Complaints that gold workings polluted creeks and ruined drinking water were an on-going annoyance for the miners. Galloping to the rescue came Premier Richard John Seddon, known as ‘the miners friend’. By the turn of the century, law had been passed to designate any stream draining a mine as a sludge canal.
We have echoes of this 100 years later, when a SE manager at Stockton described the once-beautiful Ngakawau as an "industrial river".
Up to the 1970’s, a mining company could mine private property without the permission of its owner. The Taramakau gold dredge did this to farmer Passmore Stewart. He had to watch as the huge machine gobbled up his paddocks, leaving nothing but a vast heap of stones.
Mining licenses gave coal and gold miners wide powers to pollute and destroy. The present-day Stockton mines are licensed under the Coal Mines Act 1979. The license is deliberately vague regarding the degree to which SE can pollute rivers and streams. West Coast Regional Council dutifully ticks off filthy streams as "within compliance".
Mining law also allows SE to claim it can legally kill any plant or animal, no matter how critically endangered. Doubtless influenced by this, the Minister of Conservation recently said that the destruction, or otherwise, of the entire habitat of a very rare Powelliphanta snail is an "operational matter" for SE. This is despite DOC responsibilities under the Wildlife Act to protect snails (and kiwi). Government is similarly obliged to protect rare species via its Biodiversity Strategy and international treaties.
Speaking of the Biodiversity Strategy, I attended the Forest & Bird national conference earlier this year. A guest speaker was Al Morrison, DOC’s deputy director. During the course of his talk he stated that compromising the Biodiversity Strategy is not an option for the department. At question time I asked if it is not a contradiction that DOC has agreed to the destruction of roa/great spotted kiwi habitat in Happy Valley, the site of the proposed Cypress opencast mine. Morrison replied that DOC won’t take a stand against SE only to go down in defeat. To me this summed up the "junior partner" status DOC has conferred upon itself in regard to SE.
In light of all this, its not surprising that green NGOs, the Green Party and Ngati Waewae have had to do the job of both local and national government in protecting the global atmosphere, rare species, rivers and streams and wonderful natural landscapes.
It’s also not surprising that we have broad support for our campaigns. These days the public is aghast that streams you could drink from are now poisoned, that rare species like Powelliphanta snails can be made extinct or that a mining company can destroy the habitat of our national bird and even kill them.
