He said mana whenua have resisted the mining bid since the beginning, and would continue despite Manuka’s wholly-owned subsidiary Trans-Tasman Resources (TTR) quitting the usual consenting process.
Instead, the Government has accepted TTR as an applicant under its new fast-track approvals process.
“I am unapologetic about interrupting the Manuka Resources shareholders’ AGM,” said Watene.
“We’ve fought Trans-Tasman Resources three times in court, and three times we’ve won, but now TTR is using the fast-track and we have to fight them again.
“From the mountain to the sea, from Aotearoa to Sydney, we will fight to protect our rohe and stop seabed mining taking place.”
New Zealand Greenpeace activists handed out a “shareholding pack” including a letter warning that TTR’s plans would continue to be resisted.
Greenpeace Aotearoa spokesman Juan Parada said they protested to show Trans-Tasman Resources and Manuka Resources that the opposition will follow them wherever they are.
“TTR has tried and failed for more than a decade to get approval to mine the seabed because it was never able to show that it wouldn’t cause substantial harm to the environment.
“If seabed mining is fast-tracked, it will be in contempt of all expert advice and the wishes of local iwi, environmental groups, Taranaki communities and the 60,000 New Zealanders who’ve signed the petition for it to be banned.”
Minister for Resources Shane Jones told business leaders last week he would protect the miner’s mineral rights.
“The people associated with the ironsands off the coast of Taranaki already have certain rights out there. Our Government is not going to … strip people of their rights.
“I don’t believe any of those apocryphal stories at all.
“I believe that the proponents of those stories have been captured by false prophets who don’t believe in economic development.”
Trans-Tasman plans to vacuum 50 million tonnes of sand every year for 35 years to extract valuable vanadium, and iron and titanium.
It would suck up almost 180,000 tonnes of sand a day, going 11 metres deep into the sands beneath shallow waters off Pātea.
But TTR needs consent to dump 45 million tonnes of sediment back into the sea annually – or 160,000 tonnes daily.
The finest particles would drift off in a sediment “plume”, which opponents say will settle over the Pātea Banks reefs.
The EPA rejected TTR’s first application in 2013, but three years later granted consents.
Eleven parties joined to object through the High, Appeal and Supreme Courts: Ngāti Ruanui and Ngaa Rauru, the Taranaki-Whanganui Conservation Board, environmental activists and commercial fishing lobby groups and companies.
Supreme Court judges unanimously rejected the application over lack of environmental caution, sending it back to the EPA with instructions to block mining if consent conditions couldn’t prevent pollution.
The chair of the EPA’s final hearing on the bid, retired appeal court judge Lyn Stevens, had read the submitted evidence and told TTR’s lawyers the mining would be harmful.
“It’s inevitable that there will be findings in this case of material harm in various respects and that’s been admitted,” he said.
“How might [consent] conditions mitigate those. Or can they?”
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
