WRITE TO US
Dear Trans Tasman Resources,
It seems funny to be writing you a letter in the paper, but recently you took out a full page here to talk to me. I am responding using your choice of communication.
You have returned to
Taranaki. You want to mine our sand, born of our mountain, now lying underwater off Patea.
You promise training and work for our young people, yet yours is a largely robotic operation. Once extracted the ores would be pumped at sea and shipped away directly for foreign processing. We don’t need ghost jobs.
The procedure you propose has never been done anywhere, ever, by anyone. The scale is 50 million tonnes a year uplifted from the sea bed. That is 8000 tonnes per hour the equivalent of a quarter acre section, four metres high, every hour of the year.
The site of your proposal lies along our 12-mile limit. The soils you propose to mine and pour back in to our waters your own reports describe as toxic. Heavy metals are contained within. All effects will be coming in on the tide to be felt by our people, but you propose to operate just outside of our councils’ regulatory oversight. So we clean up the effects with no say and no pay.
Is this fair play where you come from?
Many pages of detail are blacked out in your application. To see them a confidentiality agreement must be signed. To know is to be silenced.
Again, is this fair play where you come from?
Mana whenua over the area you wish to mine lies with Ngati Ruanui. You say you have consulted with them.
Are you familiar with Maori decision-making processes? It is not my place to share what belongs to others, suffice to say, matters of importance are discussed deeply in search of the best way to benefit all. Anyone reading all of the information in your proposal is prevented from discussing it with their elders or families without imperilling them by legal action. If discussed, no one may speak of what they know. It is hard to see what consultation has been possible under these your mandated conditions, even with the best of will.
Does this seem a little cynical to you?
I don’t know what it is like at your place but we are dealing with a lot more rain and flood events. Some predictions are that we will experience four times what used to be average rainfall. Burning heavy fuel oil is implicated as a cause. The operation you moot for Taranaki would be powered by heavy fuel oil, adding 75% to what the whole of NZ currently uses.
No one wants to fight you. We all have families, lives, the usual occupations we enjoyed before you came. A lot of them centred around the sea. Our taonga.
What do you want with the ore anyway? It is not worth much. Maybe it is the titanium you want. That stuff is made in to war machinery. Would you forge our mountain into bombs?
This province is finding its way to peace.
Thanks for writing. Please keep in touch. Come for a cup of tea.
Clearly, we still have much to talk about.
Sincerely
Alessandra Keighley
New Plymouth 4310 We welcome letters to the editor, 250 words or less preferred. Published at the sole discretion of the editor and they may be edited. Include your address and phone number (not for publication). Send to Taranaki Star, 55 Regent St, 4610 or PO Box 428, Hawera or email to star@dailynews.co.nz. Deadline: Fridays 4pm.