A male duck with no mate, 32 large natives trees in the path of an access road and a stream considered sacred by Maori are some of the issues Pike River Coal Ltd worked through to mine coal on Department of Conservation (DOC) administered land on the West
A male duck with no mate, 32 large natives trees in the path of an access road and a stream considered sacred by Maori are some of the issues Pike River Coal Ltd worked through to mine coal on Department of Conservation (DOC) administered land on the West Coast.
The underground mine near, and eventually under, Paparoa National Park was approved by a Labour-led Government in 2004, after years of court proceedings. Forest and Bird called it a supreme environmental folly that ignored a DOC analysis of impacts.
Mine general manager Peter Whittall is -- not surprisingly -- in favour of more mining in the conservation estate.
"Pike has demonstrated that it is prepared to mine within the boundaries of its consents and take an active view of that."
The private sector mine has cost more than $240 million to develop and has just exported its first shipment. During a longer than signalled development phase it has been more in the news for disappointing investors and asking for more money, than for its impact on the environment.
Mr Whittall argues mine activity has enhanced the wildlife in the area.
"There was one blue duck in the whole valley that we were able to find," he said.
Weka arrived in numbers looking for food when road development churned up the soil.
Pike's resource consents require a pest and predator control programme to create a habitat for native birds. Wild goats, which nibble on new shoots, were culled at Christmas and 17 stoats and 229 rats exterminated in the December quarter.
The company sponsors a blue duck enhancement programme and pays a couple from nearby Blackball to sit in the bush at night and map the kiwi population in the Pike River and adjacent catchment.
Access issues created uncertainty for mine development.
Engineers had only walked the access road route and had no drill hole information when costing and planning the road. The company also drilled the 2.5km mine tunnel through an area it had virtually no information about because getting access for bore holes was too hard.
"Our knowledge and our predictability was hampered by being in the DOC estate."
The access road was diverted around important trees. The lower part of the access road had previously been logged, but 32 large native trees were removed from the upper road.
Each tree removed was agreed with DOC, which wanted compensation of between $5000 and $10,000 a tree.
"The issue I had with that was what does that do for the area we are mining in? We would rather give them 10 new rimu for every one we took out and they agreed to that, ultimately," Mr Whittall said.
The mine does not take anything from, or put anything into, the sacred White Knight stream at the mine entrance and has built a wall to protect it. The stream flows into Pike River about 80m down from the entrance.
Mr Whittall said it has been a learning exercise for both sides and in other countries he had worked the regulators had more experience in dealing with mining companies.
Once approval for the mine was given there was a new phase in relationship with DOC with new people on both sides.
"It started well and we've continued to have a good relationship."
There have been notifications of non-performance to the regional council and the company was fined for a discharge with a high coal dust particle content into the Pike River in 2009.
The mine has paid a $2m bond to ensure it meets promises to remove its "footprint" when it leaves.
The pays the cost of a liaison officer for DOC and other administration cost.
"If they come to visit us we pay them. At the end of the month we get a bill from DOC for their time spent on Pike."
The mine is on three levels of DOC estate. The issues become larger the higher the land status, the highest being national park.
Underground mining causes land to drop so areas under sandstone cliff faces, near streams and within 10m of a fault are not being mined.
Pike argues its plan to extract 17.6 million tonnes of coal from a resource estimated at 58.5 million tonnes is a low 30 percent recovery rate.
The company is clearly hoping to be able to take out several million tonnes more if it can build up a track record on subsidence impacts. A history of subsidence impacts and two years notice is required to mine under the park.
"There will be subsidence," Mr Whittall says. The issue was what impact it had.
"We will be monitoring the tilt of trees," he says.
The public is not allowed in the mine lease area while the mine operates.
Mining could be greater than currently envisaged if a lower Paparoa seam is extracted. The mine gives the Paparoa seam no value in its accounts but sees it as a source of upside potential.
"Mining conditions should reflect what the public wants by way of conservation, but they also need to reflect a balance between the economy of a country and the assets of a country.
"So long as mining is done sensitively the country wins both ways. You get the economic value from the mine and you still maintain the conservation values," Mr Whittall said.
