No open-pit mines on Coromandel Forest Park, despite confusing fast-track listing

A misleading description of OceanaGold’s Waihi North Project in the Government’s newly released fast-track list suggested the company plans to turn native bush into open-pit mines, but the company says this is not the case.
The project, included as one of the first 149 to pass before an expert panel, was described on the official fast-track list as a “new open pit over multiple project sites at Wharekirauponga”, but the company told Newsroom this was an “appalling” miscommunication.
A smaller open pit has always been included in the larger project, but it has always been slated for south of the town rather than north, where the bush begins. A spokesperson for OceanaGold reiterated “we will not, and are not, and should not, open-pit the Coromandel Forest Park”.
Minister for Resources Shane Jones said he was “genuinely puzzled” as to how the confusion arose and wasn’t sure if it was “an oversight on the part of the applicants, or something that slipped through a bureaucratic crack”.
The Waihi North Project has been a source of contention for environmental groups since its announcement. It comprises several initiatives, including a smaller open-pit mine that would later be refilled. The old open-pit mine still dominates Waihi’s landscape.
The major thrust of the operation is a 6.8 km tunnel dug under Wharekirauponga, part of the Department of Conservation’s Coromandel Forest Park. Below the surface is about 1.5 million ounces of gold, valued at $4 billion. Ventilation shafts for the tunnel would need to be built in the above park, a prospect opponents have challenged with litigation.
But skipping the tunnel to dig an open-pit mine has never been part of the conversation. 
OceanaGold was approached by the Government in advance of the Fast-Track Approvals Bill. According to official documents, Jones met representatives from OceanaGold and other interested parties on January 23. 
Four mining projects were included on an early draft of the fast-track bill, each proposed by an industry group present at this meeting. All four projects appeared on the final list announced by Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop on Sunday. The Waihi North Project was one of these.
The company’s description of the Waihi North Project has never mentioned using an open-pit approach to get at the gold deposit below Wharekirauponga, but on the final fast-track list, it was described as a “new open pit over multiple project sites at Wharekirauponga”. 
In full, the description read “The Waihi North project is for the staged expansion of the existing mining operations including a new underground mining operation and new open pit over multiple project sites at Wharekirauponga, Waihi North.” The confusion seemed to stem from the phrase “multiple project sites”, which was intended to cover both the underground and open-pit operation, rather than multiple open pits.
A spokesperson for OceanaGold told Newsroom on Tuesday his phone had been ringing constantly all day, as “you and the rest of the country” wanted to figure out what had happened.
But he was steadfast in his assertion that no open-pit strategy had ever been on the table for the forest. It was an “appalling miscommunication”, he said.
He believed the error arose within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. The multiple projects under the project’s umbrella somehow “got conflated into one sentence, which makes it look as if we are open-pitting the Coromandel Forest Park”.
Morgan Donoghue, of Ours not Mines, has a long history of opposing the Waihi project. He was surprised to see how the project was listed on the fast-track, and said if you didn’t have prior knowledge of the context, you’d think “lots of opencast mines on the Coromandel”. 
Donoghue said it was “a continuation of the poor communication when it comes to mining”.
But he said the difference was mostly aesthetic. The extractive consequences would be much the same; be it above or below ground, the gold mining operation would still necessitate the creation of tailings ponds, which store the heavy-metal laden slurry leftover from mining. “We’re [still] going to ruin something very beautiful for no real upside,” he said.
Donoghue was more interested to see if OceanaGold would drop out of court proceedings to take advantage of the fast-track’s override capabilities, as Trans-Tasman Resources did for it’s controversial seabed mining operation, which also made the list.
The Waihi project has been met with protest and criticism throughout its process, with Jones frequently engaging in debates with protesters on the ground. The minister told Newsroom mistakes like these can easily lead to conspiracies in an industry as “riddled with misinformation” as mining.
No matter where the error came from, Jones said, “if there is slackness in the accuracy of information, then we need to remedy that situation.” Jones said he had faith in the ministry, which is staffed by “extremely professional trained people… lawyers, policymakers and geologists”. 
But he also had faith in OceanaGold’s communications, as this particular project had been extensively documented both in the media and in official channels. Jones said the Waihi North proposal is “fairly well known – it’s been subject to existing litigation. It’s been thrashed out in various forums to date”.
The fast-track has been criticised for expediting intricate processes at the expense of attention to detail. 
Other legislation prepared by the coalition government has met similar critiques, most recently the Crown Minerals Act Amendment Bill, which saw only two hasty days of public oral submissions.
In the Waihi case, a ministry staffed by experts confusingly communicated a technical detail of a highly publicised project, with the project’s representative indicating the error did not originate from their end. 
Other agencies have complained of the pressures imposed by hurried deadlines. The Ministry for the Environment has repeatedly expressed an inability to conduct complete or thorough analysis of proposed legislation, including the fast-track bill itself, due to tight timeframes set by Government.
Newsroom asked Jones if he thought such an error would have occurred if the ministry was not subjected to such time pressures. Jones responded “if the issue lay somewhere between the quality of the applicant’s information and the checking of the completeness from [the ministry], then fair cop, we need to ensure that the checks are thorough”.
A spokesperson for the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment explained the description had been summarised by officials based on information in the application forms, and acknowledged it “could have been worded better”.
MBIE clarified that the multiple sites referenced in the description were distinct: a new underground mine north of Wharekirauponga, and a new open-pit on OceanaGold’s private land at Gladstone Hill, to the south.
“This will be clearly reflected in the Bill.”