New Waihī mining bid prompts pushback
A gold mining company’s push to expand its Coromandel operations – including by drilling a 6.8km tunnel under conservation land – has prompted plans for court action from an environmental group.
OceanaGold announced on Tuesday it had lodged an application for its proposed Waihī North Project with Hauraki District Council and Waikato Regional Council.
The multi-million dollar company found gold and silver in the area three years ago and has since undertaken exploration drilling and surveying– with the expectation that it would extend mining in Waihī for at least another 15 years.
Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki chairperson Catherine Delahunty said the group will go to the Environment Court if needed to protect the site and taonga species such as the threatened Archey’s frog.
Wharekirauponga, 10 kilometres north of Waihī, sits on public conservation land administered by the Department of Conservation.
Modern exploration for gold began there in the 1970s, with several mining companies conducting exploration throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
OceanaGold purchased the Waihī operations and ongoing exploration programme in 2015, finalising ownership of the interest at Wharekirauponga in 2016.
Since then, many conservationists and anti-mining groups have worked to keep the area mostly untouched.
In a statement, OceanaGold said access to the proposed facility would be from an underground tunnel off private land, with no mining at surface level.
Material would also be removed by tunnel, not trucked out using public roads.
The facility is part of a wider plan to dig a new open pit mine west of the current processing plant, build a new tailings storage facility for mining waste, and create a new rock storage facility.
‘‘The Waihī North Project has the potential to produce over 1.6 million ounces of gold and over 2.2 million ounces of silver over a 13-year period, complementing the already consented Project Martha and extending the life of mining in Waihī to 2037,’’ the statement said. OceanaGold is conducting ongoing environmental assessments and technical reports at Wharekirauponga.
‘‘We acknowledge that the proposed Waihī North Project, if approved, will result in localised impacts on the environment.
‘‘These will be mitigated in the long term through rehabilitation and remediation activities.
‘‘We understand that native bush and its biodiversity is precious to all of us.
‘‘Our extensive ecological studies, including work we have done during our exploration phase, are already providing the scientific and ecological community with a greater insight into the species that inhabit this area.’’
The project could also create several hundred additional jobs in the region and produce billions of dollars of exports over the coming years.
Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki chairperson Catherine Delahunty, however, argues if mining is allowed under Wharekirauponga ‘‘any DOC land could be up for grabs’’.
‘‘Even though the Government has promised that they would stop new mining on DOC land they haven’t done it, so we are forced into a situation of fighting for this case,’’ Delahunty said. Under the Crown Mineral Act 1991, Schedule 4, there is to be no open cast mining, and no underground mining with significant surface expressions on conservation land.
Wharekirauponga, though a conservation area, isn’t under a protection order that covers tens of thousands of kilometres of land and marine areas.
Tunnelling would require fossil fuels and huge amounts of concrete, which has a heavy climate impact and was the last thing the country needed, she said.
She would like to see more baseline data publicly available for the area, before a decision does go ahead.
‘‘Mining is an archaic way of doing things.
‘‘We shouldn’t be digging up gold from mountains, we should be reusing our waste and using our minerals from above the ground.
‘‘There’s plenty above the ground for the 200 years – we do not need any more gold mining.’’
Public submissions will be called for once the councils have assessed the applications.