Frank Film: Plans for more mining on the West Coast divide locals

Over 600 metres about sea level just north of Westport, the Denniston Plateau is a wild, windswept stretch of land once renowned for its bleak and often dangerous underground coal mining operations. Today, its reputation lies in its breathtaking views and extraordinary wildlife – huge forest weta, giant flatworms, Powelliphanta predatory snails, great spotted kiwi, skinks and geckos – and rare carpet canopy of low-lying flora, including Southern rata, growing up to 15 metres on the flat but here trailing across the ground a mere 30cm in height.

It is also home to valuable hard coking coal used for steelmaking.

After mothballing its open cast Escarpment coal mine on the plateau in 2016, Bathurst Resources, which holds permits over more than 10,000ha in the Buller coalfield, is now looking to expand and open more mines on this land.

Local feelings are mixed.

“Mining has been the backbone of the West Coast,” says Heath Milne, chief executive officer at Development West Coast, in his home inland from Greymouth. “Not just the economy but the identity.”

Barrytown Flats resident Suzanne Hills, chair of Forest & Bird’s West Coast branch, points to its unique ecosystem of sandstone, herb fields and wetlands.

Triple the mining, she says, “and we might triple the environmental destruction. We don’t have to keep both feet firmly in the past of extractive industries.”

Suzanne Hills, chair of Forest & Bird’s West Coast branch. Photo / Frank Film

Under the planned Fast-Track Approvals Bill and amendments to the Resource Management Act, extractive activity is poised to increase but on Te Tai Poutini, social licence – the public acceptance of a commercial activity – is not a given.

Next to the Denniston Plateau, Stevenson Mining’s proposed Te Kuha open cast coal mine is promising about 58 full-time-equivalent jobs and to provide $9 million in royalties.

But the project would decapitate part of a ridgeline highly visible from Westport and destroy, says Hills, a “beautiful ecosystem.

“This mountain is iconic West Coast untamed natural wilderness – no roads, no tracks, it has value pretty much on par with an offshore sanctuary island.”

The application has gone all the way to the Supreme Court and been declined at every step, “but unfortunately,” says Hills, “it looks like it’s going to be part of the listed projects attached to the Fast-track Bill.”

Milne agrees it is a controversial mining proposal – “I don’t know if it’s going ahead” – but any mining, he says, will have some impact on the environment.

“If you do it in the right way the benefits outweigh the negatives. At the moment the demand is there for coal around the world – in the past the rules were different but I believe we have a very strong regulatory environment and the oversight is just unbelievable.”

Increasingly, mining companies are coming under pressure to implement reforestation programmes. Close to the historic mining town of Reefton, a former open pit gold mine is a surreal landscape of decade-old mining structures, waste rock and thousands of young seedlings. “It is a hill we have mined out,” says OceanaGold environmental advisor Megan Williams. “We disturbed 260 hectares of land – at the end of the closure project we will have planted over a million beech and manuka seedlings and tens of thousands of wetland seedlings. Then people will be able to walk or bike around the site and enjoy what the modern mining has left behind.”

Replanting will benefit from the surrounding beech forest but full ecological restoration, says Hills, will take decades.

It is not only coal and gold driving the push for new mining.

Further south, Australian mining company TiGa has been given the go-ahead to mine 63ha of mineral sands on private land on the Barrytown Flats for ilmenite (titanium-iron oxide), used in white paints and white coatings, and garnets.

The land, says Milne, has already been developed for farming. “Now it’s going to extract some of the heavy minerals out of it and put it back into farmland.”

But interfering with a complex hydrological system and ecosystem is not so straightforward. There are widespread concerns over freshwater quality (TiGa wants to mine within 100m of a wetland), the risks posed to nocturnal Westland petrel (TiGa has agreed not to run ore vehicles at night), and the impact of at least 50 extra truck movements on State Highway 6 between Westport and Greymouth, named by Lonely Planet as one of the top 10 coastal drives in the world.

Heath Milne, chief executive officer at Development West Coast. Photo / Frank Film

But road users, argues Milne, help fund improved roading infrastructure.

So we need more trucks?

“Yep, we actually do.”

The Coast Road Resilience Group, of which Hills is a member, has now lodged an appeal with the Environment Court.

Back in Reefton, Australian company Siren Gold is looking to mine gold alongside antimony, a silver-white metalloid used in electronics such as iPhones, lithium batteries and circuit boards, and in military equipment.

Again, the project promises more wealth and more jobs. But, according to Infometrics statistics, while mining produced 8.4% of GDP on the West Coast, in 2023 it employed just 640 people, accounting for 3.8% of the workforce, well below agriculture, fishing and forestry at 11%.

Again, locals are divided.

“It’s a mining town,” says one. “We wouldn’t exist without mining.”

“I’m scared what will happen if it is mined here and it gets released into the waterways,” says another.

And what happens to all that mining wealth? asks Hills. “I suspect most of it has gone into offshore private pockets – there haven’t been long-term enduring public good benefits.”

“To operate mine is pretty capital intensive,” agrees Milne. “And mostly Australian investors. I would certainly like to see more of what is generated on the West Coast stay on the West Coast.”

“Nature on the West Coast is our biggest asset,” says Hills. “We need to be really careful about the choices we make going into the future.”

www.frankfilm.co.nz