Gary Taylor: Reopening door to miners ignores history

Opinion

For the environment, the victories are temporary and the defeats permanent.

This is nowhere more so, it seems, than on the Coromandel Peninsula, which has been the site of a decades-long battle between mining and conservation interests, a battle we thought was over but which it seems the Government wants to open up again.

My own involvement on the Peninsula started in late 1979 when Gold Mines NZ proposed a major open-cast mine at Otama on the Kuaotunu Peninsula. The Environmental Defence Society aligned itself with the local community that was implacably opposed to such large-scale desecration adjacent to one of our very best beaches. EDS took a case opposing the project to court. A west coast district court judge heard the case under the old Mining Act. EDS was obliged to obtain an overnight High Court injunction to stop the case when the judge gave an adverse ruling.

A consequence of that project was the large-scale mobilisation of a community protest movement across the peninsula and in Auckland and Hamilton as well. Bill Birch was the Minister of Energy at that time and was sympathetic to the need to have better scrutiny of mining projects. More court cases followed and the Mining Act was amended in 1981 to bring it more in line with other land and water use statutes.

Subsequent governments took things further. Mining became subject to the Resource Management Act in 1991 and the industry became more sophisticated. It shifted its focus in the region away from highly sensitive coastal sites and concentrated its activities around Waihi and areas off the peninsula proper.

In 1997 the forested land under control of the Department of Conservation north of the Kopu-Hikuai Road was declared closed to mining under schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act. That was the culmination of nearly 20 years campaigning, lobbying and litigation. It was a hard-won decision and it's worth noting that it was made by the National-led government at the time.

Going on in parallel has been litigation relating to the status of mining in the Thames-Coromandel District Plan. It started in the mid-1990s when Coromandel Watchdog made submissions asking for mining to be made a prohibited activity across private land on the peninsula. The council initially agreed but appeals were filed in the Environment Court by mining interests. After hearings in various courts, mediation followed that has been put before the Environment Court for consideration and a decision is expected shortly.

Given all of this history and the fact that we now have a settled position in prospect in which both the Crown Minerals Act and the Resource Management Act policy settings will be in place, it is disappointing the Government is opening the saga up again.

The bemused reaction of government ministers to the outpouring of concern about the prospect of opening scheduled DoC land, including the peninsula, to mining shows little understanding of the history and the effort required to finally get settled policy. It is fallacious to dismiss concerns about the environmental effects of hard rock mining in the high rainfall, forest-covered, species-rich Coromandel forests as scaremongering. The peninsula is not the Australian desert. Its landscapes and ecology are outstanding and support a sustainable tourism industry.

Mining should concentrate on lower value land elsewhere.

* Gary Taylor is Chairman of the Environmental Defence Society www.eds.org.nz