Cypress/Happy Valley News No. 3
Solid Energy Top Exporter. So reads the headline of the clipping Im looking at with a picture of Helen Clark handing the Supreme Exporter of The Year trophy to Solid Energy’s chief operating officer Barry Bragg.
Last year SE produced a record 4.1 million tonnes of coal with half that exported. All this export coal comes from West Coast mines. Net profit from the SOE was $56 million.
Export volumes are expected to reach 4m tonnes within 4 years.
Of course the clipping did not mention that SE was recently given the Toxic River of the Decade award from our activists, or that it plans to destroy kiwi and Powelliphanta habitat at a new mine planned for Happy Valley. No mention also of the contribution to climate change from burning that coal. What happened to the government’s Kyoto commitments???!!!
Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimmons is currently on the Coast. Last night she met Ngakawau Riverwatch members at a pot luck dinner at the Granity Fire Station. Today she and husband Harry are getting a tour of the mine and Happy Valley with SE and DOC
The on-the-ground support of the Green Party is so important to our campaign. Similarly our activism will help the party. There’s so many important issues come together at Happy Valley.
Winning Hearts and Minds. It’s a rough and ready rule that a campaign is in the bag when you’ve won over a sizeable majority of voters. Regarding the coal plateau, SE is telling the public the pollution of waterways at Stockton is "historical", the mine operates to "global best practice", its managers are "proud environmentalists" and though kiwi and snails will be disturbed, remedial work will produce a "net conservation gain".
We are saying the water pollution, rather than being historical, is on-going and getting worse. The pollution you can’t see (acid, metals) is worse than the stuff you can see (coal fines, silts, sands). The remedy to this pollution - burying 10s of millions of tonnes of crushed rock in stagnant lakes forever - is probably not feasible due to the broken nature of the plateau and would be so expensive it may make the whole mining operation uneconomic.
We’re saying its time to burn less coal, not more. Greenpeace is calling for a phasing out of coal mining.
We’re also saying its time to make a stand for kiwi and rare snails. Since early last century its been a crime to kill a kiwi, but its still perfectly legal to destroy its habitat.
I’m sure the NZ public is well on the way to agreeing with us. However may have some difficulties convincing people that a perfectly clean-looking stream is highly toxic. Also that kiwi should be allowed to stay in the prime habitat of Happy Valley despite DOCs seeming ability to transfer them elsewhere.
SE may also make a big deal of the fact that small amounts of Stockton coal have been used overseas to make activated carbon and carbon fibre - ie the coal is not burnt.
The great advantage we have is we already have a strong coalition - this is evident with the appeal where Forest & Bird, Buller Conservation Group, Tai Poutini Conservation Board, and Ngati WaeWae are opposed to an open cast mine in Happy Valley, while DOC and Riverwatch want much tighter conditions for a mine to go ahead.
More pollution events. Last Friday’s Westport News had a lead story on pollution from the coal handling facility at Ngakawau. Regional council plans to serve SE with an abatement notice in a few days. SE then has 10 days to take steps to prevent the problem happening again.
Riverwatch spokesperson Debbie Chorley said "black" water had poured out of the facility’s settling ponds into the Ngakawau R, but SE staff on site were indifferent to her pleas to have it fixed. SE’s national env boss Mark Pizey said he is "very disappointed" about the incident. However he’s been saying this for a long time over many, many incidents at the facility and things don’t improve.
Regional council recently tested water streaming out the bottom of the Granity Ck diversion dam. It has a pH of 3.2. This is about as acid as pollution gets on the plateau. From what I know, all stream life is killed at this level of acidity and dissolved metals will also be high.
Naturally plateau streams have pH around 5 and very low levels of metals - in fact the metal levels are so low that the water is well inside NZ drinking quality standards.
