Doubts cast on Waikato coalminimg programme

Press, 22 October 1983, Page 7

Doubts cast on Waikato coalminimg programme

Wellington reporter

Grave doubts about the Government’s mining programme for the Waikato coalfields has been cast by the Wellington-based group, Coalition for Open Government.

The coalition has published a “Report on the Great Waikato Coal Rush” based in part on documents leaked to it from the Ministry of Energy.

It accused the Government of making its Waikato coal decisions “back-to-front.” The Government would not be in a position to make key decisions about Waikato coal production until after supplies had been begun of increased amounts of coal to New Zealand Steel’s mill at Glenbrook and the Huntly power station. Two issues were identified by the Coalition:

® Would the planned Ohinewai opencast mine be feasible?

® Would long-wall mining be successful in the planned underground mines? These were key issues, the coalition said, because by 1998, the end of the present planning period, it was planned that about three-quarters of all Waikato State coal production would come from the Ohinewai mine and longwall mining. By the time the Govern-

ment was due to make a final decision on the Ohinewai mine, which was New Zealand Steel’s preferred source, the corporation’s consumption would nearly have trebled.

In the graph prepared by the coalition it was shown, that the key decisions would not be made until after demands for coal from Glenbrook and Huntly had already started to increase.

The Coalition outlined the timing:

® The Ohinewai mine feasibility study was due to be completed in August, 1984, and a decision on whether to proceed with the mine was due in March, 1985.

© The first long-wall trial was due to start in December, 1985, and the decisions about installing more longwall machines in the Huntly East and Huntly West mines, and the decision on whether or not to dig a second Huntly West mine

was due in mid-1987. By the time the first longwall trial was due to start. New Zealand Steel would already have taken up almost two-thirds of its expansion in coal demand and the demand from the Electricity Division of the Ministry of Energy would have more than doubled, the coalition said.

Political commitments by the Government to supply this coal meant that effectively the decisions had been made without the Government having the information to judge whether Ohinewai or long-walling were feasible projects. Because the decisions had already been made, the legitimate concerns of such groups as local farmers, the Maori community, mine workers and environmentalists, were likely to be overridden in a rush to mine the coal.

In its report, the coalition

reviewed the specific concerns these groups might have.

“We deplore the way these decisions have been made,” the coalition said. “The Waikato coal supply commitments must be reduced.”

A public inquiry should be held into the economic, social, and environmental desirability of the planned Waikato coal mining expansion.

This inquiry should also look at the advantages and disadvantages of the various options for reducing coal demand.

“An inquiry needs to begin immediately,” the coalition said. “There is little time in which to put contingency measures into place.” There was also little time before the Government declared its Waikato coal plans to be a fait accompli, even though it was known the plans might not work.