Limestone mining to some is like museum desecration

Press, 5 August 1988, Page 13

Limestone mining to some is like museum desecration

Story: NANCY CAWLEY Department of Conservation photographs, Punakaiki

A tussle in Buller, between the Department of Conservation and New Zealand Cement Holdings, on the extraction of limestone from an ecological reserve, is coming to a head. But there are signs a mutually satisfactory agreement may be reached. Three years and a half ago, Cement Holdings hired an Auckland firm of consultant geologists to survey the Tiropahi-Waggon Creek area, north of Punakaiki, for limestone supplies to feed their Cape Foulwind plant at Westport. The three-week survey found plentiful limestone of a reasonable composition in the Tiropahi (sometimes called Four • Mile Creek) and reported similarly on other adjacent areas and places like Berlins in the Buller Gorge. On the strength of those findings, Cement Holdings filed an application for a mining licence for the Tiropahi in 1986. Chemical details of the report stated that “the Tiropahi limestone has a CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) content significantly below the 84 per cent lower limit

required for a primary component,” but that the blue bottom

mudstone overlay “could have potential as a correcting material.”

The result of the mining application was an outcry from those who felt the area had unique environmental values. A longrunning wrangle ensued, with concerned conservationists and the department on one side, and Cement Holdings and the jobconscious people of Westport on the other.

The opening of the Paparoa National Park was imminent and was to include the area under discussion. Petitions calling for the area to be freed were presented to the Minister of Con-

servation, Helen Clark. When the new park was opened by the Governor-General, Sir Paul Reeves, on December 5, 1987, excluded was the TiropahiWaggon Creek area lying immediately beyond the park’s northern boundary, one of Westland’s 73 ecological reserves.

In the last six months, although feelings have run high on both sides, the potentially explosive situation has been somewhat defused by frequent co-operative discussions between Cement Holdings and Westport representatives of the Department of Conservation. But the future of the 400 hectares of virgin bush, and its honeycomb of caves and precious fossil remains, is still in the balance.

In their hundredth year of operation in New Zealand, Cement Holdings say they plan to modernise and extend the Cape

Foulwind plant, and even investigate the feasibility of a deep water port. But if they fail to secure further substantial limestone supplies they could be forced to pull out of the area altogether. It has been suggested that the threat to leave Westport is a political bluff, but the town’s mayor, Pat O’Dea, says the firm is serious. He has no doubt that jobs will go if the Department of Conservation does not release the limestone reserves.

The deputy regional manager for Westland, Neil Clifton, says his department is aware of the importance of a suitable limestone resource for Cement Holding’s operation. But he doesn’t appear keen to surrender Tiro-pahi-Waggon Creek. “Buller district conservator Kevan Wilde has been working closely with company representatives to ensure that other potential sources

are fully investigated,” he says.

Kevan Wilde himself has been reported as saying, “If the cement works closed, I would not like to be district conservator in this town.” But he emphasises that the situation is one of “zero hostility” on both sides.

A recommendation will be made by the department in the near future, but the buck stops with the Helen Clark, Minister of Conservation. She is deferring a decision on a mining licence for the Tiropahi until she is satisfied all alternatives have been investigated, and full environmental documentation presented. For the people on the spot, the staff of the Paparoa National Park based at Punakaiki, guardians of what they see as an irreplaceable resource, the issue is a heart-breaking one. The chief conservation officer, Grahame Champness, has a background of 20 years of park work in New Zealand, 10 of them in the Punakaiki area.

Every year, Champness and his staff take guided walks up the Tiropahi and Waggon Creek, as part of the park’s summer holiday programme. A one-hour ramble along an old pack track and bush tramway leads through untouched bush and river flats to the silver beech remains of an old sawmill at the Waggon Creek junction, passing under towering limestone cliffs on the way. A 1985 report by the National Parks and Reserves Authority, on the proposed park, said, “The Punakaiki area contains scenery of distinctive quality, ecosystems of outstanding scientific interest and beautiful and unique natural features.” The report also said that the scenery was “of such distinctive quality that its preservation is in the national interests.”

Besides the landscape there are other recently discovered wonders. When the French naturalist and film-maker, Jacques Cousteau, visited Punakaiki last year, he and his film crew discovered a whale skeleton in a cave called Madonna, thought to be between 20 and 30 illion years old. Another cave, the Equinox, contains the complete skeleton of a giant moa. Cousteau’s comment when he heard of the threat to the Tiropahi, and possibly the caves, was:

“Who in their right mind would mine a museum?” (Seventeen caves in a distance of several kilometres have been found in the Tiropahi-Waggon Creek area.) If mining in the TiropahiWaggon Creek is given the goahead, the area will obviously be irreversibly damaged. Although little evidence would be seen from the main coastal road, forest and stream quality will be severely downgraded. An access road would traverse the Tiropahi, obliterating the 100-year-old logging road and necessitating considerable tree-felling (although there is the possibility of

using a peripheral bush road)

Extensive clearance of the native bush would be necessary at the limestone extraction site. The geological report to Cement Holdings suggests that Waggon Creek could be deepened and used as a sump. “The route up Waggon Creek would require considerable evacuation... half the potential quarry area could be drained directly into Waggon Creek.”

Although he may find it difficult to be objective about this emotive issue right on his door step, Grahame Champness feels a compromise is possible and any polarisation undesirable.

“Communications must be kept open, and hopefully an alternative site found.”

He also points out that the beauties of the Paparoa National Park would probably not exist for New Zealanders to enjoy, if the area had not been so isolated originally. Commercial groups would long ago have put roads up the valleys and cleared much of the bush. The message is clear — this area of exceptional beauty and natural history interest has survived so far almost by the accident of its location; from now it will need more positive guardianship.

Situation

now defused

Whale skeleton

and giant moa