Editorial: Clarity on toxic mining

It appears Shane Jones has not been listening.

In his opinion piece he accuses Pakeha with environmental concerns about mining of trying to undermine hapu development aspirations. He's missed the point, not all mining techniques are equal. For example, mining limestone and aggregate within his own rohe would not create toxic waste.

Legitimate concerns being raised are on mining techniques that leave toxic waste. I would expect all MPs and councils to take this seriously instead of blindly rolling on with corporate economic development speak.

The type of rocks that hold gold and silver in the North means its extraction would create millions of tonnes of toxic waste that would most likely end up stored at the top of water catchments.

How? The gold-baring rocks would be crushed to a powder, flooded with cyanide which separates out the gold and silver. This chemical process using cyanide also changes the nature of the remaining heavy metals in the rock and makes them "bioavailable".

Conservatively, 18 tonnes of toxic waste is created per gold ring. Often it is more.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the largest gold deposits in the north are in places that are flood prone, Puhipuhi and Whangaroa.

If politicians are serious about regional development they wouldn't be advocating toxic mining techniques that put other forms of longer term income generation downstream like farming, tourism and fishing at risk by a short burst of mining that leaves toxic waste for thousands of years.

Far North District's Wayne Brown has previously been asked by Paul Homes if mining would be sustainable. Instead of giving the honest answer of "No", he dodged the question by saying that any concerns would be dealt with through the Resource Management Act.

Proposals to gut protections in this law even further were announced by the Government in recent weeks.

It seems the authorities are in a rush to appease foreign corporate interests at every turn. I'd like to see Labour have more integrity in this debate.

So Mr Jones, please be clear, is Labour's policy on toxic mining the same as National, Act and Wayne Brown?