New Mining Coming To The Coast?

Over 600 metres about sea level just north of Westport, the Denniston Plateau is a wild, windswept stretch of land renowned for its breathtaking views, rare carpet canopy of herb fields, wetlands and low-lying flora and extraordinary wildlife – huge forest weta, giant flatworms, spotted kiwi, skinks and geckos. It is also home to valuable hard coking coal used for steelmaking. After mothballing its open cast Escarpment coal mine on the plateau in 2016, Bathurst Resources is now looking to expand and open more mines on this land. Local feelings are mixed. “Mining has been the backbone of the West Coast,” says Heath Milne, chief executive officer at Development West Coast, in his home inland from Greymouth. “Not just the economy but the identity.” Triple the mining, says Barrytown Flats resident Suzanne Hills, chair of Forest & Bird’s West Coast branch, “and we might triple the environmental destruction. We don’t have to keep both feet firmly in the past of extractive industries.” Under the planned Fast-Track Approvals Bill and amendments to the Resource Management Act, extractive activity is poised to increase on Te Tai Poutini, but social licence – the public acceptance of a commercial activity – is not a given. Next to the Denniston Plateau, Stevenson Mining’s proposed Te Kuha open cast coal mine is promising about 58 full-time-equivalent jobs and provide $9 million in royalties. But the project would decapitate part of a highly visible ridgeline and destroy, says Hills, a “beautiful ecosystem.” “This mountain is iconic West Coast untamed natural wilderness – no roads, no tracks, it has value pretty much on par with an offshore sanctuary island.” The application has gone all the way to the Supreme Court and been declined at every step, “but unfortunately,” says Hills, “it looks like it’s going to be part of the listed projects attached to the Fast-track Bill.” Milne agrees it is a controversial mining proposal – “I don't know if it’s going ahead” – but any mining, he says, will have some impact on the environment. “If you do it in the right way the benefits outweigh the negatives. In the past the rules were different but I believe we have a very strong regulatory environment and the oversight is just unbelievable.” Increasingly, mining companies are coming under pressure to implement reforestation programmes. Close to the historic mining town of Reefton, the former OceanaGold open pit gold mine is a surreal landscape of decade-old mining structures, waste rock and thousands of young seedlings. “We disturbed 260 hectares of land,” says OceanaGold environmental advisor Megan Williams. “At the end of the closure project we will have planted over a million beech and manuka seedlings and tens of thousands of wetland seedlings. Then people will be able to walk or bike around the site and enjoy what modern mining has left behind.” But even with the help of surrounding beech forest, says Hills, full ecological restoration will take decades. It is not only coal and gold driving the push for new mining. Further south, Australian company TiGa has been given the go-ahead to mine 63ha of mineral sands on the Barrytown Flats for ilmenite, used in white paints and coatings, and garnets. The land, says Milne, has already been developed for farming. “Now it’s going to extract some of the heavy minerals out of it and put it back into farmland.” But interfering with a complex wetland ecosystem is not so straightforward. There are concerns over freshwater quality, the risks posed to nocturnal Westland petrel (TiGa has agreed not to run ore vehicles at night), and the impact of at least 50 extra truck movements on State Highway 6 between Westport and Greymouth, recognised as one of the top 10 coastal drives in the world. The Coast Road Resilience Group, of which Hills is a member, has lodged an appeal with the Environment Court. Back in Reefton, Australian company Siren Gold is looking to mine gold alongside antimony, a silver-white metalloid used in electronics and military equipment. Again, locals are divided. “I’m scared what will happen if it is mined here and it gets released into the waterways,” says one. “It’s a mining town,” says another. “We wouldn’t exist without mining.” But mining is not the major employer on the Coast. According to Infometrics, while mining produced 8.4% of GDP on the West Coast in 2023, mining jobs accounted for just 3.8% of the workforce, well below agriculture, fishing and forestry at 11 percent. And what happens to all that mining wealth? asks Hills. “I suspect most of it has gone into offshore private pockets – there hasn't been long term enduring public good benefits. “Nature is our biggest asset on the West Coast. We need to be really careful about the choices we make going into the future.” Attributions: Department of Conservation Forest & Bird Neil Silverwood Lauren Kelley Rod Morris Oceana Gold Historical photos: West Coast New Zealand History