NRC Acts to Undermine Public Concerns Over Toxic Mining

Whangārei, Friday 10 May 2013: Groups opposing the most dangerous form of mining proposed for Northland, toxic hard rock mining, say the Northland Regional Council is deliberately undermining legitimate, well-founded and wide-ranging concerns raised by farmers, members of public, advocacy groups and hapū. 

The Regional Council recently released its response to submissions on the proposed Northland Regional Policy Statement. The final Regional Policy Statement will guide the resource policies, and the content of all Northland regional and district plans, for the next ten years. 

NRC have recommended rejecting the large number of submissions wanting a prohibition on toxic hard rock mining or its vetting under a “precautionary approach” (1). They also recommend rules around toxic mining be left to “rigorous evaluation” under the Resource Management Act’s consent process.

But MineWatch Northland says the effects and legacy of this type of toxic mining would never be acceptable anywhere in Northland under a proper consent process. “Hard-rock mining creates vast amounts of tailings dust that is heavily contaminated with heavy metals like mercury, cadmium and arsenic”, says Tim Howard spokesperson for MineWatch Northland. “This dust must be kept wet and be stored forever in huge dams. These dams can fail in natural disasters, or simply due to poor design or maintenance. Even stable tailings dams must overflow during heavy rain leaking contaminates into groundwater. Surely we pay the NRC to protect water from contamination of toxic waste. This must be one of the highest priorities across Northland.”

MineWatch says Northland areas most likely to be mined this way are prone to flooding. Because of this, MineWatch along with many others are seeking prohibition of toxic hard rock mining across the region. The group believes that the NRC is in utter denial about the potential downstream impacts of toxic waste, including those on our vital farming industries.

“All mining-related responses in the report completely sidestep the issue of toxic waste and its legacy, which, can never be fully cleaned up. The NRC confuse toxic hard rock mining with with non-toxic quarrying for limestone, china clay or roading aggregate. This begs the question ‘Does this council even know what they are dealing with?’”

“Not only have the NRC moved away from what they were originally set up to do but conflicts of interest on mining crisscross the NRC and district councils. It is highly likely that those with the most serious conflicts are involved in driving decisions to undermine the public. The situation is so bad that the NRC don’t even know if a resource consent is needed in exploration drilling expected at Puhipuhi next month which could release toxins into waterways,” says Tim Howard.

(1)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

ENDS

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