State-owned coal miner Solid Energy has lodged resource consent applications for major new mining operations on the Stockton Plateau, targeting five million tonnes of high-grade coking coal, which is used in steel-making.
Solid Energy has extensive workings on the plateau, which is adjacent to, and to the north of, the Denniston Plateau where West Australian company Bathurst Resources is fighting environmental groups' opposition to its plans for another open-cut mine.
One of the leading opponents of the Bathurst project, Royal Forest and Bird Society of New Zealand, appears likely to treat the Solid Energy application differently from the Bathurst application.
"Stockton is already heavily mined. Denniston is pristine," said Forest and Bird conservation advocate Claire Browning.
