Editorial: Pressure on EPA to say 'Yes'

Mark Dawson, editor, Wanganui Chronicle

If I were a betting man, I might wager on the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday granting the application by Trans-Tasman Resources to mine ironsand off the Patea coast.

The EPA is to announce its decision in Wellington on Thursday morning - or, at least, we understand that is the case. After delays, extensions, grace periods and re-thinks - and several earlier dates given for the announcement - one cannot be too sure.

The verdict was originally due in April; then mid-June, then July .... each time the EPA moved the goalposts, seeking more information and more deliberation for an application that was ruled "complete" in September 2016.

The sneaking feeling is that the EPA has been looking for an excuse - for enough "expert opinion" - to say "Yes" to a deal that covers 66 square kilometres of seabed and involves sucking up 50 million tonnes of ironsand a year for 35 years.

So my money is on the mining company getting the nod, though with stringent conditions.

The problem with stringent conditions is that, no matter how stringent, the impacts on aquatic life and the ecology of the sea are just guesswork. The only thing we can say for sure is that those impacts will be almost exclusively negative.

The Government - via the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment - supports the application. It supports extraction of oil, gas and minerals in general and says TTR's estimates of extra jobs and a boost to the NZ economy are "largely sound".

The only thing we can say for sure is that there will be some jobs and some extra dollars for the economy ... but, again, we are in the realm of guesswork.

One might think the Environmental Protection Agency is there to protect the environment but perhaps it is also known as the Econmic Development Agency and we just haven't been told. Whatever, it seems to be under some pressure from government to reach the right verdict.

In June, the Project Reef Life picked up a major environmental award in Parliament for its revelations about the remarkable sea life off the South Taranaki coast.

Perhaps we have been waiting for a suitable period of time to elapse before that sea life is put under threat.