Court challenge over seabed mining

Challenge to Trans-Tasman Resources' permit to mine up to 50 million tonnes of iron sand a year over 35 years

Ma¯ ori interests were not properly considered in the decision to allow iron sand seabed mining off Taranaki, a court has been told.

Opponents of the controversial scheme went to the High Court at Wellington yesterday seeking to overturn environmental permission for the project.

A lawyer for Ma¯ ori and fishing interests, Francis Cooke, QC, said as far as they were aware this was a world first for deep sea iron sand mining to be allowed to be undertaken.

The permission, though, had split the Environmental Protection Authority decision-making committee, the hearing was told.

The outcome allowing mining had depended on the chairman’s vote.

Cooke said the majority decision of the committee had reduced to an ‘‘interpretive gloss’’ the strongly-worded direction to take into account the interests of Ma¯ori, and give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Instead the interests of Ma¯ ori could be said to be reduced to lip service, he said.

The highest concentration of suspended sediment from the mining would occur in a coastal marine area offshore from the Nga¯ti Ruanui district, and fish were expected to avoid the area, with severe effect on seabed life within 2km of the operation, and moderate effects up to 15km of the mining area.

Cooke said an earlier application for the same activity, by the same parties, in the same area, had been declined on different evidence. One of the later committee’s alleged errors was not taking into account the first decision to decline the application.

Even the committee that gave consent described some of the effects from Trans-Tasman Resources’ mining as perhaps being catastrophic, Cooke said.

The company has allegedly spent about $80 million preparing for the mining.

The decision-making committee said that when extraction finally ended the effects would be long term, but not permanent.

Cook said the committee appeared to have applied a standard that allowed the environment to be harmed provided it ultimately recovered.

It had misunderstood, and misapplied the law, he said. The committee never identified the standard against which it judged the environmental effect.

At the start of Monday’s hearing some members of the public could not find seats in the crowded courtroom and had to listen to proceedings via a link to a court foyer.

In August, the authority’s committee granted Trans-Tasman Resources 35-year marine and discharge consents to annually mine up to 50 million tonnes of iron sand in the South Taranaki Bight.

A remote-controlled dredge will vacuum sand from the sea bed between depths of 20 metres and

42m, at a rate of 8000 tonnes an hour, to a processing ship. The dredging is earmarked in an area

22 kilometres to 36km off the coastline from Patea.

The decision committee said the company proposed extracting seabed material and processing it on a vessel. Approximately 10 per cent of the material would be processed into iron ore concentrate and the rest would be discharged to the seabed. It was expected much of the concentrate would be sent to China for steel making.

Taranaki iwi, Greenpeace, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining, the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, the Taranaki-Whanganui Conservation Board, Cloudy Bay Clams, the Federation of Commercial Fishermen, Southern Inshore Fisheries Management Company, Talleys Group, Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd, and Trustees of Te Kaahui o Rauru, have appealed against the authority’s approval.

Trans-Tasman Resources is supporting the committee’s decision.

The hearing is expected to take about a week.