‘‘A cascading set of trigger points and consequences’’ is how the chairman of the expert panel characterised the concerns of the Otago Regional Council’s legal representative at the hearing held in Cromwell yesterday, but the description could have been used in relation to much of the testimony laid out by submitters.
The threat of irreversible damage, and uncertainty about how biodiversity, ecological and heritage loss would be mitigated, were the hearing’s defining features, a long list of organisations criticising the application including the Otago Regional Council (ORC), Central Otago District Council (CODC), Department of Conservation (Doc), Environmental Defence Society, the New Zealand and Otago Fish & Game Councils, Forest & Bird and the Central Otago Winegrowers Association.
The primary theme of ORC legal representative Dave Randal’s submission was a lack of consideration for anything but what was considered to be the most likely scenario by the applicant, and a failure to consider the knock-on impacts and future decision-making frameworks required to deal with unforeseen circumstances.
‘‘There are issues in which there is some over-reliance on specifying an outcome in a future process to verify assumptions, with more thought required as to the contingencies and what happens next,’’ Mr Randal said.
To illustrate the point, Mr Randal raised what he described as the ‘‘meritorious’’ suggestion to salvage and store 25,000 tussocks for replanting in the future, but a failure to consider the consequences of this plan not working as hoped.
This lack of certainty was a theme of the morning’s session, the CODC’s legal counsel expressing significant concerns the transport infrastructure required for the mining project had not been agreed on with the council.
Submitters across the session expressed significant concerns about the impact of the project on ecological and biodiversity values and how any losses would be mitigated.
Doc senior solicitor Pene Williams described the impact on lizards at the proposed mining site as unprecedented, while pointing to the extinction-level threat facing the Ceratocephala pungens plant.
In addition, Ms Williams said there was concern with what Doc saw as a desire by Santana Minerals to revoke the Bendigo Conservation Covenant to a greater extent than was required for its activities, increasing the area vulnerable to environmental damage.
Ms Williams said while Santana Minerals had proposed a $10 million biodiversity and heritage enhancement fund, to be managed by Doc, it now proposed this fund be managed and administered by a committee selected by Santana Minerals, with no role for councils or Doc, which was a concern.
While the morning’s session took place in front of a half-empty room, as the Santana Mine Supporters Group’s submission neared the audience swelled significantly and it was standing-room only when group spokesman Bill Sanders began to speak.
Mr Sanders referred to the 10,000 members of the Santana Mine Supporters Group as the ‘‘quiet majority’’, and pointed to the results of a survey of the group’s members as evidence of local demand for the goldmine.
Mr Sanders pointed to the struggles of living with Central Otago house prices without the wages to match, and posited the mine as the foundation for a new, sustainable local economy in the region.
In closing, Mr Sanders’ submission was met with applause from many of the late arrivals to the hearing.
While the majority of the criticism of the fast-track application leaned into the environmental risks, a local opposition group raised the stakes by positing the Santana Minerals application as a potentially precedent-setting case study.
Sustainable Tarras’ legal representative, Julian Miles, said the organisation had 10,600 members and was growing by about 1000 members a fortnight, and described the fast-track application at hand as a ‘‘stalking horse’’ for a significant number of future applications.
Yesterday’s hearing was the second of three days of hearings being held across Otago as part of the fast-track process.
The third day of hearings will be held in Cromwell tomorrow.
