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State-owned coal miner Solid Energy has welcomed a court decision rejecting a bid to close down its opencast mining operation in Buller.
In the High Court at Christchurch Justice Graham Panckhurst rejected an appeal against an earlier decision allowing Solid Energy to mine in an area which includes the habitat of an endangered snail.
Appellant Save Happy Valley, an environmental lobby, had argued the company required additional land- and water-use consents to operate its Stockton opencast mine.
Lawyers for Solid Energy said the Buller District and West Coast Regional Councils had confirmed Solid Energy's view that no further consents were required.
In remarks last month before reserving his decision, Justice Panckhurst said the snail only became known as a new species 13 years after the mining permit was issued.
Such findings would make spending millions of dollars on mining licences a "haphazard" activity, he said.
The appellants argued, unsuccessfully, that this was a rare instance where new information arose which was not available to the decision-makers at the time.
Solid Energy chief executive Don Elder said the company was doing everything necessary to protect the endangered snail species, Powelliphanta Augustus.
"We will spend almost $10 million protecting this snail population; obtaining the necessary permits and authorities to relocate them," Dr Elder said.
More than 5600 snails had been collected from the Stockton ridgeline area and almost 2000 had since been released back into a predator-controlled habitat, he said.
A spokeswoman for the protest group, Frances Mountier, said the decision "simply signals the inadequacy of New Zealand's law in this area".
The country's biggest coal mine should not be exempt from the Resource Management Act, she said.
Meanwhile, the head of railways network operator Ontrack says he's appalled at protesters who chained themselves to a Christchurch railway line, and the company will seek reimbursement over the stunt.
Ontrack chief executive David George said the Save Happy Valley protesters who used concrete and chains to lock themselves to the track had relied on a single, last-minute phone call to alert the authorities.
"Apart from being an act of trespass and wilful damage ... relying on one late telephone call to stop a train is essentially playing Russian roulette," Mr George said.
Train controllers had less than four minutes to signal a coal-laden train to stop at Rolleston, and if that hadn't worked they would have needed to contact the train driver by radio.
"Most of the time, this isn't a problem, but from time to time ... we lose radio contact.
"By the time the driver had physically seen them, it would have been too late. A fully laden train takes up to 1000 metres to pull up from the moment the emergency brake is applied.
"Locked to the railway line, there's no way the protesters could have survived."
Activists Simon Riddel and Gregory Curline were arrested for interfering with railway lines and will appear in Christchurch District Court on May 3.
Mr George said the protest had risked lives and exposed the train driver and emergency workers to the trauma of dealing with the situation.
Ontrack would pursue Save Happy Valley, which was formed to protest opencast coal-mining, for the costs associated with removing Riddel and Curline from the track, he said.
Save Happy Valley spokesman Graham Jury said the protesters had taken precautions to ensure their lives weren't in danger, and that the safety and welfare of the train drive was also taken into account.
"They were able to remove themselves from the scene (immediately) if they needed to," Mr Jury said.
When asked how they would have done that, he declined to comment.
He said Riddel and Curline used a concrete block which was inserted under the track, and a steel pipe lock embedded within the block.
Although the protesters had the means to free themselves quickly, it took fire crews time to extract them because of the steel and concrete involved, which required a number of different tools, he said.
Rail authorities had ample time to deal with what was certainly not a life-and-death situation, Mr Jury said.
Don Elder said the protest was a frivolous publicity stunt.
Solid Energy operates coal mines on the South Island's West Coast and has been the target of past protests by Save Happy Valley.
"Protesters (showed) that they have little regard for the law and that they don't give a second thought about tying up the time and resources of the emergency services as well as the courts."
Dr Elder said the group was less concerned with protecting the environment and more concerned with disrupting Solid Energy and costing it money.
- NZPA
