The late Brian Turner used to grumble a lot in private.
As a celebrated poet, essayist and environmentalist, he resented the inordinate time required of him to write on resource management and environmental matters, all in the performance of his personally perceived duty to promote the long view and be a guardian of the land and rivers he revered.
Predictably for a poet, he really just wanted to write poems. However, Turner knew the consequences of not standing up for the natural world.
Before his eyes, energy projects, dairy conversions, subdivisions, forestry and mines were eating into the fabric of the country in which he had grown up.
In many cases, the change was so radical as to be virtually inconceivable had he not witnessed it personally. And just as shockingly, such changes were apparently accepted by the majority of the community as wholly normal, even unremarkable enterprise.
Turner died last month. While he was by no means the only voice of conscience in the region, his death leaves a painful hole in the community in terms of the example set by his vigilance.
He was willing to be counted as an unapologetic naysayer in the face of endless schemes concocted by opportunists at the expense of the natural environment. And he was quite right that the long-term adverse effects routinely undercut the alleged merits of projects at proposal stage.
A rash of gold-mining is now being proposed for Otago. The Otago Daily Times has reported Minister of Resources Shane Jones’ view that "with the government taking a more permissive approach towards mining, and the price of gold soaring, ‘people are prepared to chance their arm"’. (11.2.25)
Hurrah, the proponents crow, we are all finally going to get rich quick on the back of offshore interests. The proposed gold mine at Bendigo alone is, according to the newspaper, "expected to generate $5billion in revenue".
In fact, corporate losses ought logically to be the focus. That means local employment created by the enterprise, tax revenue, the trickle-down to the local economy. We should not be focusing on the value of profits headed overseas.
And far more importantly, there should be a focus on the potentially incalculable loss to be suffered by the community not just now but in the further future as a result of permitting natural environments to be replaced wholesale by toxic rubble.
Santana Minerals’ proposal for Bendigo stands to create a giant leaking sore in the Dunstan Mountains at the head of Lake Dunstan. If approved, an area of significant beauty and heritage significance will be converted into millions of cubic metres of spoil, the overburden dumped in a neighbouring valley at the expense of the resident waterways and biota.
While the company may insist on alleged best practice in the conduct of its business, there can be no doubt that the mine will poison waterways and earth (time will tell how extensively).
Santana and other mining proponents may assert that the spoil will in due course become pasture or perhaps be replanted with native plants and shrubs. Yet gorse and broom are likely to be widely dispersed throughout the area by the years of mining activity.
Native planting may re-establish some species but the ecological idiosyncrasies of the former cover will have long ago been eradicated, and the post-mining rehabilitation will be little more than a commercially funded gardening project.
There will be no prospect of recovering what has been lost. Open-cast mines are for keeps.
The Dunstan Mountains and Thomson Gorge are important parts of the Otago lakes scenery. That scenery in turn is essential to who we are as a regional culture, economy and society.
Without very good reason, it is barbaric to permit them to be butchered in the name of private enterprise.
In view of that loss, it is imperative that we ask ourselves as a community in advance of such activity: Is this what we really want? Fifty years from now, will the fabled profits genuinely compensate for the irreversible losses?
Santana hopes to use Jones’ Fast-Track Approvals Act 2024 to sidestep public opposition. Unlike with major infrastructure and mining proposals in the past, there will be no opportunity for the concerned public to have input on the alleged benefits and detractions, or the proposal’s scope.
Rather, at best, a panel of technocrats will take the task out of the public’s hands, with no public hearing convened to investigate properly the huge adverse effects.
In view of the scale of its proposal and its impact on the community, Santana’s decision is, in this writer’s view, cynical, anti-democratic, cowardly and indeed immoral.
The ultimate blame for this cringeworthy state of affairs does not however lie with Santana’s management, but with Jones.
The Fast-Track Approvals Act alone should be abundant evidence to sheet home the disastrous track record of the present government. It is obvious that they must go, and the sooner the better.
Even if the standard avenues for challenging the puffery of the corporate gold-mining fraternity have been shut down by the government, with the result that the likes of grumbling Turner have been relieved of the burden of drafting submissions in opposition, this does not mean we should simply accept our lot and remain silent.
Rather, we must stand with Turner. Open-cast mines that sacrifice whole geophysical frontiers for the sake of private profiteering must be openly denounced as a dead-end for this country’s future.
We cannot simply sit on our hands while the whenua is being gutted.
- Richard Reeve is a Dunedin poet and lawyer.
