Resource Consent Submission
Pete Lusk :: Buller Conservation Group

Solid Energys Stockton Mine is an environmental disaster zone. Vast rock stacks leak acid mine water into our streams and rivers. Coal dumps on the plateau weather away to a fine dust. This dissolves in the rain to produce an oil-like liquor, rather like the waste oil you would drain from your car. Together, this cocktail of pollutants pour off the plateau.
So polluted is the Mangatini Stream, that it acts as a herbicide - the mist that rises from the Mangatini Falls kills the surrounding rainforest.

Earlier in this hearing we have heard top management from Solid Energy describing this pollution as "historical". No. It is day-to-day, on-going, and if anything, getting worse.

The pollution you see is only half of it. Buller Conservation Group believes the greatest environmental damage from Solid Energy’s operations comes from burning the coal. Just because this happens elsewhere on the planet, it cannot be brushed aside. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from Stockton coal burned in Japan, Germany, Chile or South Africa will impact just as strongly in New Zealand as anywhere.

Also unseen are the trace metals dissolved in the polluted streams and rivers. Lead, copper, mercury, cadmium, aluminium, nickel and other insidious poisons contaminate the Ngakawau and Waimangaroa Rivers, the plateau’s ground water and the sea.

There is no quick fix for this on-going disaster. It will take tens of millions of dollars and scores of years. But from what we’ve heard so far at this hearing, Solid Energy has no plans to clean it up.

Rather, speaker after speaker assures us that a Cypress mine will be different. "Engineered structures" will ensure no leaks of polluted water. Management will be at the level of "global best practice". Rehabilitation will be "world-leading". To us in Buller Conservation Group this is just PR hype.

A year ago Solid Energy completed a dam at Granity Ck - an engineered structure. Almost as soon as it was finished it sprung a leak. Here is a photo of the dam and the filthy water that poured through it for days. Who’s it say the same thing won’t happen at Cypress? Our experience suggests it will.

Talking of leaks, the large sediment dam near Mt Frederick leaks continuously - large volumes of heavily polluted water that should be diverted to the catchment of the Ngakawau are contaminating the Upper Waimangaroa River (photo). There are several major leaks in this dam alone.

Periodically the sides of the diversion drain under Mt Frederick break away. Again, highly polluted water enters the Waimangaroa.

Solid Energy tells us they will do their utmost to keep weeds out of the Happy Valley/Cypress Creek area. But already gorse and lotus are contaminating the Upper Waimangaroa. Our group wrote to Mark Pizey to have these removed. He assured us this would be done, but a recent check up shows the weeds are still there. We are left asking ourselves, does Solid Energy really care, or is it that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing?

Such experiences mean our members have absolutely no trust in Solid Energy’s promises. Similarly we have absolutely no trust in the Buller District Council and Regional Council to monitor the mine and punish Solid Energy when it breaks its consent conditions. Years of bitter experience have shown us that the councils will collude with Solid Energy to keep the mine operating while working out a strategy to hide the problem and defeat us.

If regional council was doing its job properly, Stockton Mine would be closed on the pollution of Mangatini Stream alone.

So despite Solid Energy’s atrocious record, we believe the biggest environmental problem on the West Coast is the councils. They are financed and staffed to monitor Solid Energy and police its resource consents. But it is groups like ours, with no money and no staff, that end up having to do it.

If Cypress goes ahead, Solid Energy will be killing thousands of fully protected Powelliphanta snails. If you or I were caught killing even one snail we would be fined. If we persisted in doing it, we’d go to jail. How is it then, that a state-owned-enterprise can kill them so wantonly? How can the government protect the snail on the one hand, and plan its destruction on the other? If the Cypress Mine goes ahead, we’ll see the biggest kill-off of Powelliphanta’s since the Forest Services burnoffs of the 1970s.

The kiwi is our national bird, and Happy Valley is prime habitat for roa/great spotted kiwi. Yet Solid Energy plans to dig up this habitat. How can this be allowed to happen? Its illegal to kill a kiwi. It should also be illegal to remove its habitat.

At the beginning of this hearing, Solid Energy’s CEO Don Elder talked of his staff as "proud environmentalists". How can anyone be proud of the environmental disaster that is Stockton Mine?

Barry Bragg said "the proposed Cypress Mine does not come with any historical baggage". Anyone with eyes to see knows this is nonsense. Solid Energy is the old Coal Corp is State Coal. There’s over 50 years of baggage here. It cannot be written off in a single sentence.

Our group wants "global best practice" applied first to Stockton. Our challenge to Solid Energy is to clean up Stockton Mine.

Don Elder ended his speech on the subject of credibility. I will do the same. Solid Energy has no credibility with our members. Its promises of a clean mine at Cypress are laughable given its record.

As a consequence, our group maintains its opposition to a Cypress mine.