Group Quits Unit on Coal Consultation
The Buller Conservation Group has walked away from a consultation group set up by Solid Energy, saying the State-owned coal producer cannot be trusted.
Spokesman Peter Lusk said the conservation group regretted having given Solid Energy a second chance by agreeing to join the Stockton Environmental Consultative Group a year ago.
In Lusk's opinion, the coal company was "totally and absolutely untrustworthy".
Solid Energy set up the Stockton group after apologising for the company's mining mistakes and promising to do better in future.
Meetings were held regularly and were attended by managers from the Department of Conservation, the West Coast Regional Council, the Buller District Council and Solid Energy.
However, the company announced in February that the next meeting might not be until June.
Lusk said he suspected that Solid Energy had lost interest in the group now that the Environment Court hearing over the proposed Cypress coalmine was over. He claimed the company had formed the group to impress the court and that setting up community consultation groups was a common ploy by corporate bodies when faced with court action.
Solid Energy chief executive Don Elder rejected the criticism and said the group had been established with good will to give the community a genuine say in issues about mining of the Stockton Plateau.
"We wouldn't have set up the consultative group if we didn't intend it to continue for as long as we are mining at Stockton, and we expect that will be for many years yet," he said.
It was a great shame that the conservation group had chosen to walk away when good progress was being made on several issues, Elder said.
The conservation group cited several instances that had eroded its trust in Solid Energy and the consultative group:
Elder's promise to not mine the scenic ridgeline in front of the Stockton open-cast pit and then mining it a month later.
The company mined through most of the habitat of a critically endangered giant snail, despite having a detailed map of the habitat, and now proposed to mine the balance of the area.
It had stripped overburden and set up drill sites in catchments for which it did not have water rights, such as Kerr Stream, Jones Creek and Twin Creek, which supplied drinking water to Granity.
It still planned to remove the summit of Mount Augustus to access a rich coal seam, despite pleas from iwi that it respect the mountain as a special place.
The consultative group employed the conservation group's water expert but then included a muzzling clause in his contract as though he were employed by Solid Energy.
Lusk said another reason for resigning from the group was that his members did not want to give residents false hope that the polluted Ngakawau and Waimangaroa rivers were being cleaned up.
"In fact, they will become more polluted in the short term because Solid Energy is opening more and more pits without any effective water treatment," he said.
He doubted that the Ngakawau River could ever be restored to health.
"It is very likely that the value of coal mined is not sufficient to pay for the clean-up and Stockton will finally be abandoned as the country's biggest contaminated site," Lusk said.
