These are the projects environmental groups say shouldn’t be fast-tracked

In April this past year, conservation group Forest & Bird made a plea to Stevenson Mining, the company behind plans to mine a forest-covered mountain ridge on the South Island’s West Coast.

“It’s time for them to withdraw this climate-damaging proposal once and for all,” chief executive Nicola Toki said in a press statement.

Her comments were prompted by the latest setback for the proposed Te Kuha open-cast coal mine, 10km south-east of Westport, as the Environment Court overturned a decision by commissioners to grant resource consent.

The project has suffered several legal losses, including in the Supreme Court, in 2020, over access arrangements across a local reserve, administered by Buller’s council. Access across conservation land was declined by the previous government in 2018.

Underpinning this was former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s pledge, in 2017, of “no new mines on conservation land”.

Toki said after the Environment Court win: “In the midst of a twin crisis of biodiversity loss and climate change, New Zealand should not have been digging up kiwi habitat for open-cast coal mines.”

The decision has been appealed, with a High Court hearing scheduled for April.

But now there are fears Te Kuha could get a green light through the new Government’s proposed fast-track legislation. It comes after pre-Christmas comments in Parliament by Resources Minister Shane Jones that “mining is coming back”.

(This past week, Newsroom reported New Zealand’s biggest coal miner, Bathurst Resources, paid $32,600 for a West Coast-Tasman candidate who knocked out veteran Labour MP Damien O’Connor.)

As previously reported, the Minister Responsible for Resource Management Act (RMA) Reform, Chris Bishop, has outlined plans for fast-track consenting – to “make it easier to get things done” – for locally, regionally and nationally significant infrastructure and development projects.

Environmental groups called the fast-track an “assault on democracy”, and part of a “war on nature”.

And Bishop told 1News: “Yes, we are deliberately giving the executive, central Government, more power to make sure that we can cut through the thicket of red tape that has bedevilled infrastructure projects in New Zealand for far too long.”

(The push to speed up consents follows the repeal of the RMA-replacing Natural and Built Environment Act and Spatial Planning Act.)

Answering questions from Green Party co-leader James Shaw in Parliament this past week, Bishop said more than 59 projects were being considered for inclusion in the proposed bill. The projects will have consents approved, with conditions set by an expert panel.

“We are looking at a vast array of projects,” Bishop said in Parliament, “and the precise list and exactly how that those processes work with the process we’re setting up will be a decision for Cabinet, and it’s not too far away.”

Before the list is officially announced, what are the projects environmental groups would least like to see pushed through by Ministers?

Unsurprisingly, Forest & Bird rails against new coal mines on public conservation land, with general manager of conservation advocacy Richard Capie calling it “the epitome of bad ideas”.

“If an individual Minister will now instead be able to essentially single-handedly approve a new application to mine, without public scrutiny or decent environmental consideration, that’s a massive loss for democracy, climate and biodiversity.”

His organisation is aware of other large-scale coal mine plans on conservation land – including on the “biodiversity hotspot” of the West Coast’s Stockton-Denniston plateaux.

“Fast-tracking these now could lock New Zealand into destroying conservation land for coal right up until 2050.”

Climate scientists say extracting more fossil fuels is antithetical to keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – a figure enshrined in the Paris climate agreement.

A 2021 article in the journal Nature said a 50/50 chance of keeping within a 1.5C carbon budget required nearly 60 percent of oil and fossil methane gas, and 90 percent of coal to remain unextracted.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ warnings about coal mining have become increasingly forceful.

In 2021, he said phasing out coal in the electricity sector was the “single-most important step to get in line with the 1.5C goal”. The following year, he said it was “delusional” for governments to fund new fossil fuel exploration or production. This past year, Guterres said coal and other fossil fuels must be phased out to avert climate “catastrophe”.

Worryingly, earlier this month, it was reported the world had crossed the 1.5C threshold for a 12-month period for the first time.

WWF-New Zealand’s chief executive Dr Kayla Kingdon-Bebb is another worried about Te Kuha. To fast-track a coal mine on public conservation land amidst a biodiversity crisis would defy belief, she says.

“It’s staggering that the Government would even for a moment consider tearing up kiwi habitat, trashing a unique and threatened landscape, and pushing species that are in crisis further to the brink of extinction, just to line the pockets of a few private developers.

“The proposal for a new open-cast coal mine at Te Kuha has already been overturned by the courts on the grounds it would cause irreversible damage to a precious and rare ecosystem. Ignoring these decisions and reopening the door to this proposal in the midst of a climate and biodiversity crisis is indefensible and immoral.”

According to evidence produced in court, the mine’s expected to produce four million tonnes of coal over 16 years, and create 58 full-time equivalent jobs.

Te Kuha is the only deposit where the Brunner and Paparoa coal measures overlap, and the high-quality coal, ideal for steel manufacturing, is being eyed for export as it’s expected to fetch premium prices.

When hearing commissioners granted consent, they said the adverse effects would be tempered over time by mitigation, rehabilitation and compensation measures.

“In balancing the matters required under the statutory instruments, we are conscious of the fact that, over the last four years, Buller has faced significant employment losses (in excess of approximately 1000 redundancies).

“While the mine would not fill the gap, we are satisfied that, in economic terms, the mine proposal at Te Kuha would help to potentially offset some of those losses.”

However, in her decision issued this past year, Environment Court Judge Prue Steven said the positive effects didn’t overcome the ecological effects of an open-cast mine in an outstanding natural landscape.

Josie Vidal, chief executive of mining industry lobby group Straterra, tells Newsroom she doesn’t know which projects are on the fast-track list. She believes the bill, which her group supports, will be introduced on March 7.

It’s possible to approve good projects quickly while maintaining appropriate checks and balances, she says.

“This legislation will be important to mining sought-after mineral resources in New Zealand to contribute to the global supply chain and boost the country’s export-led economic recovery. This will not be at the expense of the environment, as some say.”

Miners are mired in red tape, she says – seeking permits, consents, access agreements, concessions, and approvals from various government departments, across at least six Acts.

“The system is inefficient, repetitive, subject to varying skill levels of people processing applications, and varying timelines across government departments.”

Costs can put off investors and make “great” projects impossible to proceed, Vidal says. 

“We are seeing optimism now, after a period of time where people have looked at what’s ahead to get a project off the ground and sometimes just walk away – it’s not worth the time and cost and constant bombardment of negativity.”

The Te Kuha mine, being pursued by Stevenson Mining and Wi Pere Holdings, would, if developed, span 144ha – nearly the size of Christchurch’s Hagley Park.

Most of the mining footprint is reserve, administered by Buller’s council, while 12ha is stewardship land, managed by Department of Conservation (DoC), and 2ha is private.

(DoC-managed land is a contentious issue on the West Coast.)

Conservationists say the area has significant ecological and landscape values, with a rich diversity of trees, some hundreds of years old, and threatened and at-risk plant species.

The mine footprint is home to the largest-known population of forest ringlet butterfly, New Zealand’s rarest butterfly species, and is significant habitat for great spotted kiwi/roroa.

Environmental Defence Society chief executive Gary Taylor says coal-mining would have been his first choice to keep from fast-tracked consenting, too, because of concerns over climate, and potential regional and local effects.

Instead, he picks two other projects which he deems inappropriate.

The first is a solar farm proposed for Crown lease land in the South Island’s Mackenzie Basin. The 88-megawatt solar array is proposed by the Simpson family on Balmoral Station, a Crown pastoral lease near Lake Tekapo/Takapō.

Taylor says solar farms can be positive with less detrimental environmental effects.

The other proposal EDS thinks shouldn’t be given accelerated approval is a gold mine in Central Otago planned by Australian listed company Santana Minerals, which has hailed its site at Bendigo as “the most significant single gold discovery in New Zealand in four decades”.

Taylor says the high country station on which the mine is proposed has outstanding landscape and ecological values. “Such a big, complex and challenging project should go through an independent expert panel.”

In January, Santana’s Arrowtown-based chief executive Damian Spring told the Wānaka Sun newspaper the project “needs the label of a project of national significance”.

Newsroom asked Spring to respond to Taylor’s comments, and state if Santana had asked for its proposed mine at Bendigo to be fast-tracked.

“We are watching developments regarding the proposed legislation which we understand will not make a project exempt from complying with environmental regulations,” Spring says.

He adds: “I want to assure mana whenua, my community, and environmental groups that we are committed to developing the mine on modern environmentally sustainable principles and that any disturbance will be balanced by work to ensure valuable species are healthier overall because of the project.”

Asked again if Santana has advanced its project as a fast-track candidate, Spring replies: “As I stated, we are watching developments regarding the proposed legislation. Once the government introduces the legislation, we will consider our options.”

Spring told RNZ the company briefed Resources Minister Shane Jones on the project in December.

Back to Balmoral Station, in the Mackenzie Basin.

Council-appointed hearing commissioners said of the solar array plan: “Our critical finding is that the proposal is likely to give rise to more than minor adverse effects on significant biodiversity values present at the application site.”

(The Simpsons have appealed to the Environment Court.)

Taylor, of EDS, maintains there’s a better site over the fence.

Amanda Simpson, daughter of applicants Andrew and Karen, who replies on behalf of the family, says: “We investigated a number of sites across the property, considering the ecology, visual/ landscape, and operational feasibility factors before deciding to progress with the application site.”

Balmoral is “actively engaged in discussions with politicians”, Simpson says, and the family is “excited to understand the criteria for the proposed fast track consenting”.

“We have been saddened with the response thus far from EDS to our proposal, as we strongly believe on balance the array provides a net-positive environmental outcome.

“This is particularly so when considering the compensation package we offered, which would put 300 hectares of land (with significantly better ecological values than the application site) into a QEII covenant for protection.

“We continue to engage positively with all environmental groups.” 

Worries about consenting back door

Greenpeace’s pick for a veto for the Government’s fast-track is a seabed mining proposal by Trans-Tasman Resources. (The company has already told Newsroom it has lobbied National and New Zealand First to get on the fast-track, and hopes to have consents in place by June.)

Iwi Ngāti Ruanui, Greenpeace, and others successfully fought the company’s plans all the way to the Supreme Court.

Now, Greenpeace’s seabed mining campaigner Juressa Lee (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi, Rarotonga) worries about a consenting back door being opened.

On top of climate change, overfishing, biodiversity loss and pollution, Lee says the controversial seabed mining is an additional threat to the ocean “that we cannot accept”. 

“If they are allowed to proceed under the fast-track Bill, it could be the beginning of the widespread destruction of our marine environment.”

Greenpeace’s anti-seabed mining petition has attracted almost 60,000 signatures.

“The South Taranaki Bight is home to New Zealand’s own population of Pygmy blue whales, māui dolphins and blue penguins. It also has a vibrant coral reef system. All of this unique beauty would be under threat if seabed mining is given the go-ahead.

“Allowing seabed mining to start under the fast-track Bill could risk the government falling short of their obligations to Te Tiriti, undermining hapū and inhibiting tangata whenua engagement in the process.

“It goes against the advice of scientists who warn of risks to whales and other marine species and against the wishes of so many New Zealanders who see the oceans as taonga rather than something to exploit even more.”

Trans Tasman Resources told Newsroom in November this past year its dredge would suck up 50 million tonnes of titanomagnetite ironsand from the seabed a year, to extract vanadium, titanium and iron ore-rich.

About 45 million tonnes of sand would be returned to the bottom of the sea in a process that “totally destroys” the marine ecosystem – “in a very limited area for a very limited time”.

On Monday of this week, Chris Bishop, the RMA Reform Minister, told Newsroom his officials had undertaken “targeted engagement … including environmental groups and the energy and resources sectors, among others”.

“I expect their views and ideas will be carefully considered as we go through this process.” 

After its first reading, the bill, including the initial list of approved projects, will be considered by select committee.

“That provides a further opportunity for stakeholders to give feedback.”