Last week was totally given over to evidence from Fonterra (Glencoal). Today the panel will hear from local residents who support the mine. I’m told they are the ones closest to it and potentially most affected by the dust, noise, etc it will create. But they are supporting Fonterra, who told one of the submitters that they had “reached an arrangement”. How much, of course, will be confidential.

Then the panel will hear from Catherine Delahunty, representing the Green Party, and from local residents opposed to the mine.

Throughout the hearing an elephant has sat quietly in the front row, silent and well-behaved, with a sign around his neck “Climate change is the elephant in the room”. No-one, to my knowledge has referred to his presence, just as no-one is allowed to refer to climate change, the chief reason for opposing new coal mines, because previous courts have ruled that that is what the law means.

But climate change is not the only elephant in the room and needs a mate.

Tomorrow CANA is due to appear at 9am. Our submission focussed only on the availability of a solution which would avoid all the adverse effects of the mine, while creating the same benefits, including more jobs. We have an excellent expert witness, John Gifford, who has spent his career working on the use of wood as fuel. Among other senior positions he has worked for Forest Products and Scion over the years. He calculates that there is enough waste wood from forestry operations, most of which is currently left to rot, to replace the 120,000 tonnes of coal a year the mine would extract. All of it is within 110 km of the dairy factories and much of it is within 30 km.

CANA argues that it is time to start a transition to wood fuels in place of coal, and that could start by co-firing wood and coal in the current boilers. Using just wood would require capital investment in different handling and combustion facilities, but a new mine requires capital investment too. What we want is a commitment from Fonterra to start this transition.

However the chair’s ruling on the legal submission I made on Friday, says that this hearing is just about the mine and its effects. The use of the coal, and alternatives to it are not on the table. But Fonterra itself presented evidence from two witnesses on why using wood was not an option for them. This has opened the door, according to the chair, for us to rebut that evidence. But they expect our evidence to be tabled and are “unlikely to require” that our witness appear.

It seems one of the arguments, made by Fonterra (or was it Glencoal?) is that they are two separate companies. Glencoal has made the application and they are not responsible for what Fonterra does with the coal when it is sold to them – in fact it could, the chair speculated, even be sold to someone else!

Ah – but the economic benefit claimed for the project is all in terms of feeding Fonterra’s boilers and allowing our largest industry to continue on its merry course. Seems to me they can’t have it both ways.

Our second elephant would have a sign around his nick, “Wood waste is the second elephant in the room”.

At this stage we don’t know whether “unlikely to require” means “will not permit” our witness to appeal. So we are going ahead as planned. A number of journalists are interested in wood waste as an alternative to the mine so the work will never be wasted.

I’ll let you know after tomorrow what happens.

– Jeanette Fitzsimons

The post Second Elephant Needed at Mangatawhiri appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Headline of Businessweek after Sandy hit New York – will the Supreme Court understand the important link between coal extraction and climate change?

A small West Coast environment group will face off against two large coal companies – Australian Bathurst Resources and state-owned Solid Energy – at the Supreme Court this week, arguing that climate change is relevant for coal mining consents.

“Even the companies admit that their coal will contribute to climate change,” says West Coast Environment Network spokesperson Lynley Hargreaves. “So we should be able to call evidence on it.”

The group intended to call NASA’s Dr James Hansen to give evidence against the proposed Escarpment Mine at a 2012 Environment Court hearing in Westport. But Bathurst Resources and Solid Energy sought and obtained declarations from the  Environment and High Courts that climate change is excluded from coal mining – and by implication other – resource management considerations.

“We are arguing that the courts when applying our overarching environmental legislation shouldn’t ignore the most serious threat facing humanity today,” says Ms Hargreaves. “Resource consent hearings already take other complex matters into account, such as acid mine drainage and biodiversity loss. Climate impacts need to be weighed up too.”

“We are all going to face the effects of climate change – more floods, droughts and extreme weather events,” she adds.

The hearing begins at the Supreme Court in Wellington at 10am on Tuesday 12 March.

Notes:
1. The legal argument centers around the interpretation of a 2004 amendment to the Resource Management Act, which was to replace local authority consideration of climate change from New Zealand fuel combustion with a central government carbon tax, later changed to an Emissions Trading Scheme. However the amendment applies only to discharge permits, so West Coast Environment Network argues that it has no applicability to a coal mine when no application is made for a discharge permit.
2. The Environment Court has yet to announce a decision on the Escarpment Mine case, which was heard in 2012 without climate change evidence.
3. An Environment Court hearing on Solid Energy’s latest mine proposal, which was appealed by the Royal Forest and Bird Society, has been postponed pending the outcome of this week’s Supreme Court hearing.

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Sharon McGarry did not save the day. Mt William stands in line as the next mountaintop removal on the Stockton plateau. It’s the sequel to a very sad story of ignorance, intimidation and elephants; my experience opposing Solid Energy’s proposal for a new open cast coal mine on 243 hectares of Mt William on the Stockton plateau, just beyond the famous Happy Valley. It’s also a lesson to me as a first time submitter at a council RMA hearing; our legal system is wearing a blindfold.

The three independent commissioners, like three blind mice, including Sharon, who presumably still thinks carbon dioxide makes holes in the ozone layer (see The Mt William North Hearings: Ignorance, Intimidation and Elephants), have given Solid Energy the green light to take the top off Mt William (“top down” mining, they call it).

And, even though the local tangata whenua consider Mt William to be of cultural significance, mountains being their gateway to the atua (gods), Dr Ruth Bartlett, Solid Energy’s Manager of Consents and Planning, has an excellent working relationship with them so it’s ok to take their mountain away. Afterwards Solid Energy will erect a serpentine rock pou, with carved inscription, to commemorate what they’ve lost. No worries. (1)

Oh, and landscape architect Frank Boffa says that, from a distance, you will sort of see what it used to be like – a hump here, a hollow there – you know, like the ridgeline that was built up over millennia? (2) Albeit at a lower altitude you understand. Jolly good of them, don’t you think? Ruth said we don’t want anything too jagged left at Mt William anyway because the surrounding area will be low – that’s because anything greater than a sixteen degree angle up on the plateau, post mining, will be washed away by the six metre per annum rainfall – and it’s better to be in keeping with the (new) existing surroundings. (3) Anyway, they need the coal from underneath the jagged bit too.

Of course, those unique sandstone pavements, 34.4 hectares’ worth, will have to go. But oh well, there are offsets, mitigations and compensations and it all comes out in the wash to a Target Final Landform Plan, and what with some predator control for a few years in a completely different area, hey presto! A nice net biodiversity gain all round! I don’t know; the things you can do with ‘science’ these days.

Anyway, not many people go there, which in Frank’s eyes could be an argument to diminish the area’s importance. (4)

Then there’s the compelling economic argument for blasting the top off Mt William: 17 jobs and two further years of mining.

Used to be impossible to move mountains.

We mustn’t forget the wider economic benefits to the region; the two-speed economy for instance, part of the ‘boom’ portion in a mining town’s inevitable boom-and-bust cycle. House prices are rocketing in Westport. Great for some, very bad for those who don’t earn miners’ salaries to cover rent or mortgage payments.

Now, how did those commissioners make their difficult decision? On the one hand: irreversible destruction of 243 hectares of a near pristine environment, habitat for up to 59 great spotted kiwi (Apteryx haastii – threatened), land snails (Powelliphanta patrickensis – threatened) – which are site specific, so that each small region has its own snail subspecies – West Coast green geckos (Naultinus tuberculatus – declining), South Island kaka (nationally endangered), Western weka (at risk – declining), South Island fernbird (at risk – declining), NZ pipit (at risk – declining), South Island rifleman (at risk – declining), the low-growing woody subshrub Dracophyllum densum (declining), the endemic coal-measures tussock Chionochloa juncea (declining), and Parkinson’s rātā (Metrosideros parkinsonii) – mustn’t forget the eventual discharge of around 13 million tonnes of climate warming carbon dioxide into the world’s atmosphere. On the other hand: two more years of mining and 17 jobs for some lucky 12-hours-a-day, 7-day-on, 7-off drivers. Tough choice!

Mining Mt William may not be the final blow to the declining and endangered species that live there, and those 13 million tonnes of CO2 may or may not initiate runaway climate change, but in the words of expert chemist Bob Cunningham, who kindly provided me with information about ocean acidification which the commissioners refused to let me read out at the hearing: “…it is from small beginnings that momentous occasions result.” The way mice nibble away at your cheese.

It must be easier to make such choices whilst blindfolded. During the hearing, Climate Change, our gorgeous dreadlocked elephant, sat politely in the front row of the Westport Bridge Club while submitters spoke on his behalf. Sharon would not have recognised him anyway, but the other two commissioners, even had they noticed his pink floppy ears and sad round eyes, were not allowed to acknowledge him, not even to cast a cursory glance his way.

That’s because he has been banished by the Environment Court. Climate Change, the most important environmental issue facing the world today, banished by our own Environment Court and called irrelevant by the coal miners’ legal representative, Chapman Tripp.

The lawyers told local governments not to worry their heads over Climate Change. Leave it to them, they say, to that legal piece of national weasel wizardry, loved by all big fossil fuel emitters: the Emissions Trading Scheme. The ETS works wonders for Solid Energy – we, the taxpayers, subsidise 90% of their NZ emissions and anything exported doesn’t count. They get to pollute our atmosphere for next to nothing!

There it is; a sad story of three blind mice, one elephant, and a mountain.

Notes

(1) See http://www.wcrc.govt.nz/mtwilliam/hearing.html: Ruth Bartlett – Consultation
(2) See http://www.wcrc.govt.nz/mtwilliam/application.html – 13: Landscape
(3) See http://www.wcrc.govt.nz/mtwilliam/hearing.html: Ruth Bartlett – Consultation
(4) See http://www.wcrc.govt.nz/mtwilliam/hearing.html: Frank Boffa – Landscape

The post Mt William North: Sharon McGarry Did Not Save The Day appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Today the legal system in NZ has confirmed once again that it cannot see me. West Coast regional council commissioners have given the go-ahead to a new coal mine at Mt William. I sat in the room while they heard all the evidence. I was by far the largest creature in the room, as I always am when they talk about coal mining, but it seems they just couldn’t see me.

My name is climate change. My existence has been known for many years and I am recognised in government legislation, and big international conferences have been held about me for 20 years, but in NZ when it comes to coal mining, the biggest cause of climate change, I am not allowed to speak. My friends spoke eloquently on my behalf but their evidence was dismissed.

I will be there whenever decisions are made about me, challenging the blind. But be warned: elephants never forget, and are known to rampage.

Follow the appearances of the Climate Elephant on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/TheClimateElephant

The post The Climate Elephant Is Here appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.