Green Party candidate for Coromandel Pamela Grealey is deeply dismayed by OceanaGold's plans to expand its mining operations in Waihi and mine conservation land near Whangamatā.
The company has announced it wants to enlarge its Martha pit in Waihi, develop a second pit on the outskirts of town and develop a new tailings storage facility under the umbrella of what it calls Project Quattro.
"I don't know how to convey strongly enough my deep disappointment at OceanaGold's recent announcement on Project Quattro and the mining of conservation land at Wharekirauponga," Pamela says.
"We all want to see people in Waihi, and throughout the Coromandel electorate, sustainably employed - with good pay and fair conditions. However Oceana's expansion of the Waihi mines, and proposal for mining conservation land, does not fit in at all with the Green Party's vision for long-term sustainable work in the region; our bottom lines of clean water; a healthy natural environment; companies taking responsibility for 'whole of life' impacts of their activities; and, above all, the absolute sanctity of public conservation land.
"People have been kept out of areas at Wharekirauponga for several years now by private prospecting and Oceana's extension of mining there is a less-publicised element of the company's expansion. The area in the Southern Coromandel Range behind Waihi and Whangamatā is home to many threatened species. But it has only been talked about, as far as I can see, in OceanaGold's overseas investment advice, not in their statements within New Zealand and those that have been given to the people of Waihi.
