GRD considers coast options

Conservation Minister, Sandra Lee, has turned down the Perth-based company's application to extend the scope of the mine, incurring the wrath of Reefton locals who have been holding out hope that the project will bring needed jobs to the region.

GRD, which also operates the Macraes mine in Otago, says the environmental matters referred to by the Minister in her statement do not adequately reflect the detailed consideration that was given during the statutory Resource Management Act process hearing in which her department took an active role.

"Neither the Minster nor her department appealed the consents when they were granted in early 2001," GRD claims.

GRD says the project is environmentally, economically and socially positive for New Zealand.

"The net environmental gain of 282 hectares of high value conservation land in exchange for vastly inferior conservation land that Reefton project would have utilised in providing the very positive economic and social value to New Zealand, has not been considered adequate compensation by the Minister."

The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society has been one of the main groups concerned at the mining plan, claiming the 75 hectare tailings dumps for the proposed Globe Progress mine are more than twice the size of the impoundment at Coeur Gold's troubled Golden Cross mine near Waihi.

The group claims there is a greater risk of subsidence or failure in the tailings dam at the Reefton site because it in an area which is highly faulted and seismically active and has heavy rainfall.

Sandra Lee says in 1993 a previous Minister of Conservation, Denis Marshall, granted GRD Macraes an access arrangement to enable it to undertake a gold mining operation in the Victoria Conservation Park.

"Since then the company has sought a number of variations. The most recent of these was in 1998 in respect of which bonds for the whole site and long term liability of the tailing impoundment have yet to be resolved.

Ms Lee says GRD Macraes was seeking, in its latest variation application, a very significant extension to the proposed goldmine.

In refusing the company permission Ms Lee referred to the tailings dams which have worried Forest & Bird.

"While I appreciate that provision can be made to manage the risks that these structures pose in the long term, the fact is that I do not wish to incur these risks in a conservation park.

"Things do go wrong in large-scale mining operations of this sort, as we have seen with the serious problems with the Golden Cross/Waitekauri dam on conservation land in the Coromandel, which caused the mine to close and has cost between $20 million and $30 million to remedy. Hard rock mining also has a tarnished environmental record overseas."

Ms Lee says she believes the application contradicts the objectives of the Conservation Act, which requires that the area be managed to protect its indigenous, natural and historic resources, including local wildlife.

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