SHIFTING SANDS
Groups fear the fast-track bill will allow critical protections to be bypassed.
OPPONENTS OF THE SOUTH TARANAKI Bight seabed mining proposal say they would apply the same rigour to windfarming proposals in the area regarding environmental safeguards. But they fear the government’s proposed fast-track legislation will lead to Trans-Tasman Resources (TTR) finally getting approval for its plan to mine thousands of tonnes of ironsand a year.
Kiwis Against Seadbed Mining (KASM) and local iwi Ngāti Ruanui have opposed TTR in courtroom battles for a decade. Both groups say the company has failed to show adequate plans to mitigate environmental risks, particularly in relation to the sediment plumes that would be created when depositing the sand back on the seafloor. “That plume will hang in the water column and create dead zones on the seafloor,” says KASM’s Cindy Baxter.
Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Ruanui Trust environment officer Graham Young says this has been the iwi’s central concern, and it will not support TTR’s proposal until it sees mitigation plans that address this. “The difference between seabed mining and on-land mining is that underwater, the sediment plume can travel that much further beyond the site,” Young says. “TTR has had multiple years to prove its case and has failed to do so.”
He says Ngāti Ruanui is particularly concerned a law change could bypass New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf Act. “Our position as a treaty partner is recognised in the law, and so far, the guardrails of that statute have worked.”
Although TTR engaged iwi early on in its proposal, the relationship quickly soured when Ngāti Ruanui insisted on more evidence about how the company would protect the surrounding environment. The EEZ Act ensured the iwi was not cut out of the application process. “The legislation has been very strong in protecting the environment and the interests of Ngāti Ruanui,” Young says.
Baxter says the Fast-track Approvals Bill “takes away all environmental regulations, as far as I am concerned. The Conservation Act, the Wildlife Act; we’ve spent years developing those laws in Aotearoa, and for very good reason.”
Bypassing such protections is particularly risky with a project as experimental as TTR’s, she says. “No one has extracted vanadium from ironsands in New Zealand before, and nothing has been provided to give any certainty around what might happen in the environment. “We can’t just say we need a clean energy revolution, so it’s fine to trash the ocean to get there.”
Both Baxter and Young say they would seek the same environmental safeguards for offshore renewable energy development as for TTR’s proposal. “But,” says Young, “there would be more evidence as there are already examples of offshore wind farms in similar conditions around the world.”
A wind farm’s environmental impact would likely be less widespread than seabed mining, he adds. “Wind turbines are fixed singularly to the floor, and the potential environmental impact is far less than the pollution from seabed mining would be.”
Baxter agrees. “Digging up the seabed for a few wind turbines is not the same as digging up 50 million tonnes per year for several years, then dumping 45 million tonnes of that seabed back down again.” – Emma Ricketts