Seabed miner's 10-year battle in South Taranaki resumes

An Australian company keen to mine the seabed off south Taranaki wants to bring late evidence to a hearing that will decide whether it can go ahead.

At the same time, the firm has backed out of an argument with mana whenua over tikanga.

Trans-Tasman Resources (TTR) says the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) must consider its latest fisheries evidence, to make the correct decision and allow the mining.

The EPA’s Decision-Making Committee (DMC) was sitting in Te Hāwera today at the start of an eight-day hearing across three months to reconsider the application.

TTR – now a subsidiary of Australian gold and silver miner Manuka Resources – had wanted to rebut evidence about tikanga filed by Ngāti Ruanui tumu whakaae Haimona Maruera.

Iwi objected and TTR has withdrawn its intention to challenge cultural aspects — but still wants to respond to Maruera’s scientific claims.

TTR wanted to extract up 50 million tonnes of the seabed each year for 35 years in shallow water between 22km and 36km off Pātea.

After extracting iron, titanium and vanadium the mining ship would discharge 45 million tonnes of sediment, which TTR claimed would then settle harmlessly on the seabed.

The EPA rejected TTR’s first application in 2013, then three years later granted consents.

But in October 2021 – following a seven-year fight by a dozen iwi, fisheries companies and environmental groups – the Supreme Court overturned those consents and sent the application back to the EPA.

TTR has said opposition to seabed mining lacks scientific credibility and the committee must use all available information including the latest about low environmental impacts.

“The EPA is obliged to use the best information which is available and that cuts across everything and says even in cases where some information has arrived late that – subject to fairness to other parties – has to be dealt with because there’s nothing in this act says you should be using outdated and unsatisfactory information.”

The chair of the DMC, retired Court of Appeal judge the Honourable Lyn Stevens, asked where the committee’s responsibility ended to accept yet more evidence.

“Remember this isn’t the first dance. This is the third time around and it isn’t as though there haven’t been two significant DMC decisions, a Court of Appeal and a Supreme Court decision which made relevant findings.”

TTR reckoned it would earn $1 billion a year in export receipts, injecting $250 million a year into Taranaki and Whanganui, and bring almost $300 million in taxes and royalties.

But the Supreme Court insisted the EPA must take a “broad and generous” view of its Treaty of Waitangi obligations, and take into account tikanga and kaitiakitanga.

Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP Debbie Ngarewa-Packer has campaigned for 12 years against the mining since she was Ngāti Ruanui’s chief executive.

“Iwi have won every court case against TTR, and have proven beyond doubt that this company cannot meet the environmental threshold.”

She said corporations were emboldened by the coalition Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill which allowed applicants to seek direct ministerial approval if they needed a consent under the Exclusive Economic Zone Act, or similar laws.

“If TTR fails to meet the EPA’s environmental threshold again, which we are certain they will, there is nothing stopping this Government from fast-tracking their consent anyway,” said Ngarewa-Packer.

Kiwis against Seabed Mining chairperson Cindy Baxter said the company was lobbying Government rather than meeting the Supreme Court’s standard of causing no material harm.

"The last National government set up this EPA and the legislation for this environmental test, but now it appears prepared to walk away from it and turn the Taranaki Bight into an industrial zone.”

Greenpeace campaigner Juressa Lee said TTR was using the South Taranaki Bight to lure Australian shareholders, telling them it intended to develop a 700-square kilometres.

“This particular 66-square kilometre application is just the beginning.”

Climate Justice Taranaki spokesperson Dr Lyndon DeVantier said South Taranaki Bight was a hotspot for marine mammals, with populations of threatened species.

“The region’s oceanography is changing rapidly, its waters are heating, with marine heatwaves and other ‘cumulative effects’ increasingly impacting food webs,” he said.

Last June South Taranaki District Council called for a ban on seabed mining in a submission to a parliament, saying economic benefits wouldn’t outweigh "environmental vandalism”.

“TTR’s persistence suggests that the financial returns from its proposal (to mainly overseas investors) would be considerable.

“The economic benefits to the South Taranaki District and New Zealand would be minimal in comparison.”

A year ago the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) said it had found an unexpected bounty of reefs teeming with life alongside the targeted mining area.

Sonar found the Pātea Banks studded with rocky reefs on the continental shelf unusually far from the coast.

In a "Goldilocks zone" for sea life, shallow waters admit sunlight, yet the reefs are far enough offshore to avoid sedimentation from rivers and erosion.

NIWA found 14 reefs covered in kelp forests, macroalgal meadows, and gardens of 39 species of sponge.

Blue cod (including nurseries at four sites), scarlet wrasse, butterfly perch, leatherjackets and terakihi dominated the fish species, also including snapper, trevally, kingfish, and kahawai.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air