TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AUTHORITY HEARING
Trans-Tasman Resources Limited Marine Consent Application
HEARING at THE DEVON HOTEL, 390 DEVON STREET EAST, STRANDON, NEW PLYMOUTH on 7 March 2017
DECISION-MAKING COMMITTEE: Mr Alick Shaw (Chairperson) Mr Kevin Thompson (EPA Board Representative) Ms Sharon McGarry (Committee Member) Mr Gerry Te Kapa Coates (Committee Member)
Hearing Proceedings
Day 11 Tuesday 7 March 2017
Time Name Representing Topic Documents Submitted / Transcript Ref. Presented Page no's 9.04 Alick Shaw - DMC Chair Opening 1199 9.05 Dr Will Edwards Te Korowai O Representation 1199 Ngāruahine Trust 9.27 Cassandra Crowley Te Korowai O Representation 1206 Ngāruahine Trust 9.37 DMC Questions 1208 10.02 Phil McCabe KASM 1216 10.05 Cassandra Crowley and Dr Te Korowai O Closing statement Will Edwards Ngāruahine Trust 10.14 Karen Pratt Representation Presentation 1219 A quick introduction to begin NZ 45 Cape Egmont to Rangitikei River map 10.44 Morning break 1229 11.06 DMC Questions 1229 11.19 Fred McLay Taranaki Representation 1234 Regional Council 11.25 DMC Requested Mr McLay to 1236 expand on section 44 request from TRC 11.27 DMC Questions 1239 11.50 Harry Duynhoven Representation 1245 12.03 Break 1249 12.07 Catherine Cheung Climate Justice Representation NZ minerals permits - three 1249 Taranaki slides for presentation Hearings statement 12.23 DMC Questions 1254 12.29 Lunch break 1256 1.18 Nicola Patrick Representation 1256 1.29 DMC Questions 1260 1.39 Dr Lyndon DeVantier Climate Justice Representation Presentation by Climate Justice 1263 Taranaki Taranaki Inc Five slides for presentation 1.58 DMC Questions 1270 2.02 Roger Malthus Representation 1271 2.21 DMC Questions 1277 2.35 Bruce Boyd Representation EPA Presentation photos 1283 Map TTR photos Video 2.51 DMC Questions 1289
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2.53 Barbara Hammonds Nga Motu Marine Representation New Zealand Journal of Zoology 1290 Elsie Smith Reserve Society Rocky Shore Monitoring Report 2008 - 2015 TTRL NMMRS presentation 3.12 DMC Questions 1296 3.22 Malibu Hamilton Te Ngaru Roa ā Representation 1300 Maui 3.37 Afternoon break 1305 3.55 DMC Housekeeping 1305 3.58 DMC Questions 1306 4.03 John Milnes Representation 1308 4.15 DMC Questions 4.16 Sheryl Hart Raglan Sport Representation 1312 Fishing Club 4.24 DMC Questions 1315 4.33 Alessandra Keighley Representation 1319 4.41 DMC Questions 1321 4.41 Ruakura Waitai Representation 1322 4.57 DMC Questions 1326 5.02 Tanea Tangaroa Representation 1327 5.19 Mita Davis Representation 1330 5.31 Rochelle Bullock Reina Bennett Te Representation 1333 Kopere o Raehina Devon Hotel, 390 Devon Street East, New Plymouth 07.03.17
Rongoa 5.54 Break 1138 6.09 Harmony-Charm Carkeek- Representation 1139 Edwardson 6.21 Ian Steele New Plymouth Representation 1342 Sportfishing and Underwater Club 6.31 DMC Questions 1345 6.36 Andrew Purser Pātea and Representation 1347 Ted Gane Districts Boating Club 6.45 DMC Questions 1351 6.46 Vera Van Der Voorden Representation Statement of evidence 1352 6.58 DMC Questions 1356 6.59 Heather Cunningham Representation Statement of evidence 1356 7.22 June Penn Ra Puriri Representation 1362 7.38 Adjourned 1368
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[9.04 am]
MR SHAW: Good morning everybody, just an announcement before we open today's hearing. At the moment, the Thursday hearings are scheduled 5 to begin sometime after 10.00 because we have one of our members with a meeting that morning. Things have been re-organised and we now expect that we'll be able to start -- in fact, not expect, we will be starting at 9.30 which will give everybody a bit of head space on the last day of the hearings here in New Plymouth. I've got no other 10 announcements, no procedural matters that I wish to announce. Anything from any of the parties? Mr Holm?
[9.05 am]
15 MR HOLM: No, sir. Thank you.
MR SHAW: Other counsel? No. All right, well that being the case we will begin with Te Korowai O Ngāruahine Trust. Who is appearing there? Ms Crowley, Doctors Tester and Edwards? 20 DR EDWARDS: Just Dr Edwards.
MR SHAW: Just Dr Edwards, okay. All right. And this is a representation, Dr Edwards, is that right? 25 DR EDWARDS: Yes.
MR SHAW: Okay. Well, if you would just introduce yourself and we will begin.
30 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
Just by way of explanation to the Panel, I acknowledge Te Āti Awa. I'm not doing my brother-in-law's job here as the interpreter. The Ngāruahine submission has not yet begun. 35 (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: My acknowledgments to Te Āti Awa who laid down the mat of speaking yesterday. 40 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: I acknowledge also the peaceful tone that was set in terms of taking to one's enemy with peaceful thoughts of mind, and so this 45 is Ngāruahine supporting that concept.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
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INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: We do not consider these people behind us to be our enemies but, rather, the abuse of the environment; that is our enemy.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content) 5 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: And so we take on that enemy with thoughts of peace and love and we establish our credentials in terms of our whakapapa, our genealogical tables.
10 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
[9.10 am]
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Mr Edwards has just recited the whakapapa, the lineage, 15 from Te Atua, that is the realm of the Gods coming down to us, humanity. Kia ora.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
20 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: So at this point I will follow on from the footsteps of my senior tribal counterparts from the Whanganui area in terms of our presentation.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content) 25 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: And, finally, also from the presentation, the deep kōrero, deep explanations that were given by Ngā Rauru and Ngāti Ruanui yesterday.
30 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: And so it is appropriate that that genealogy be recited. There is a genealogy that is recited within our kōhanga reo, our schools of learning for our younger children. 35 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: So the realms of deeper knowledge have already been delved into by those who presented yesterday. At this point in time 40 my focus -- our focus, will be on the effects, the impacts of this particular kaupapa on our children, on our grandchildren and descendants.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content) 45 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Within this genealogy Rongo is the elder.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
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INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: In saying that, though, we also lay out the specific kōrero for Tangaroa the deity of the ocean.
5 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: And then down to us, humanity living upon the face of the earth.
10 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: From a Māori world-view perspective all of these things are connected.
15 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Aotea's world-view perspective was laid out yesterday and today also.
20 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: So I say here today that is correct, that Ngā Rauru and Ngāti Ruanui and Ngāruahine be the ones to present our kōrero, our history on Aotea. 25 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: It is totally inappropriate for someone from outside of our region to present those particular kōrero to you. No matter how 30 factual and accurate it may be, it is still inappropriate.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: So that individual concerned, even though they may be 35 connected to us through other lines of descent and lineage, leave Aotea to talk about Aotea.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
40 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: And so let me return to aspects of the karakia that was recited this morning, that karakia being one to acknowledge the morning dawn.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content) 45 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Te Haeata Te Ata refers to the morning sun as if a child is looking out from one's house towards the sun rising above the horizon.
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[9.15 am]
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content) 5 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Likewise, with a child who is looking into a house and is seeing a different kind of dawn emerging from within that house of discussion.
10 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: So leave it for the ever shining sun Hei to being enlightenment, to bring clarification; so here we are, Aotea, bringing that clarification to you today. 15 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: So in terms of bringing that enlightenment leave it for Aotea to bring that enlightenment, to bring that clarification in 20 regards to our environment.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: It is best left for the elder sibling, rather the younger sibling, 25 to address those matters.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: The report that was presented, the information that was 30 contained within, was retrieved mainly from text from books. We consider it to be a bastardisation of the true knowledge.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
35 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: If it has come from a book it is merely a bastardisation. It is not based on our houses of discussion, our houses of true learning.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
40 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: And so we acknowledge you, the DMC, the responsibility that you have in terms of making a decision on this matter.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
45 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: This thing, māramatanga, having enlightenment, having understanding; yes, it can be encapsulated in that English word "uncertainty". Is there uncertainty, or otherwise?
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INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: And so let me lay out for you these particular kōrero in relation to the scientific world-view.
5 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: My generation were sent to the western houses of learning, to universities, to become more knowledgeable in the ways of the western world. 10 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: And I am one who has risen to the pinnacles within those houses of learning. 15 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: My first qualification is in agriculture.
20 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: My second qualification is in regard to Māori language and linguistics.
25 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Those are both Bachelor level degrees.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content) 30 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: My graduate qualifications are in regards to Māori developments.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content) 35 [9.20 am]
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: My Doctorate is based on public health and, in particular, Māori in the place of our elderly within the frames of the public 40 health system.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: My post-Doctorate work is based on the connection 45 between Māori world-views and western world-views.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
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INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Professor Mason Durie has been my mentor and my teacher throughout the duration of my academic career.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content) 5 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: So I stand here before you as not only a graduate of the western system education, university education, I also stand here as one who has come from the houses of learning within my own people.
10 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: The purpose of this is not to be boastful but, rather, to explain to you my credentials.
15 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: So at this point I return to my home marae upon which I sit as a speaker, as an orator.
20 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: And also whenever I have been in universities I have been a nominated speaker on our pae tapu.
25 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Just recently, as an example, I was at Waikato University and was given the opportunity to serve that role.
30 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: And so I give you these kōrero at this point of time to provide the substance for what I am about to present, which will be in English. 35 DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: So acknowledgements to my relation, toka. We are connected, we are relations and so let us strive together to work 40 together in a peaceful way in order to resolve this issue.
DR EDWARDS: Ladies and Gentlemen, I implore you on behalf of Te Korowai o Ngāruahine Trust to think very carefully in your deliberations about what certainty you've been presented with. We've heard yesterday the 45 Chair, Alick, talking about evidence. I heard and observed a particular view that a quantitative evidential base is superior to a qualitative evidential base. The transcript will show, have it in numbers and it will be clear. I propose to you that the qualitative, the
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localised and the ancient evidence that was presented to you yesterday is of equal veracity.
MR SHAW: Could I just ask you to pause there, Dr Edwards, because I think you 5 may have misunderstood what I said?
DR EDWARDS: Okay.
MR SHAW: To the contrary, what I said was that numbers are far less important 10 than evidence.
DR EDWARDS: I stand corrected. If the transcript shows that --
MR SHAW: It will. 15 DR EDWARDS: -- I agree. There goes that point. Note.
[9:25 am]
20 I want us to reflect on Turama Hawira's kōrero yesterday; I want us to reflect on where that took us. Western science talks to us since the days of René Descartes, depending how you pronounce it, Cartesian Dualism, separation of mind and spirit. Yesterday we saw an example of bringing together of the mind and the spirit. I challenge 25 anyone who heard that kōrero yesterday that was laid, to not consider that as robust, as tested, articulate and powerful. Equally powerful, if not more powerful, than any quantitative measures that might be presented before you.
30 I also implore the Panel, with respect, that if some of those concepts may be beyond your comprehension, that's all right. But I implore you to engage with people that can show you the richness of that kōrero and what I referred to before about the kōrero, the narrative within the houses of learning of Ngāruahine, Ngā Rauru and Ngāti 35 Ruanui. If not, we are like that child, that pōtiki, outside a house of learning where the door is slightly open and you can just see a beam of light. You know there's something quite amazing in there but you are just seeing a beam of light. Open that door and what will be revealed to you is full kōrero. What will be revealed to you on the 40 terms of the guardians of those knowledge houses, in their terms what they choose to decide to share is powerful, is relevant and is robust.
If I can talk briefly, before I hand over to Cassandra, briefly about the power dynamics between knowledge systems and Mātauranga Māori. 45 I acknowledge Ngā Kaihautū and their work that they are doing to assist the EPA in their work. Two years ago Cassandra and I presented, on behalf of Te Korowai o Ngāruahine, to Shell Todd on their application for the Māui platforms. On that occasion we
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challenged the EPA to work at developing the ability of the EPA and the DMC to be able to acknowledge and bring to full light the qualitative, the ancient and the robust knowledge system that is localised to New Zealand. 5 It's a challenge for our country, it's a challenge for indigenous people and it's one that I invite EPA to take up further. I congratulate you on your efforts to date but I'd like to encourage you to continue in that journey, and to take very seriously the evidence that was provided to 10 you yesterday by Turama, by Haimona, by Uncle Jim Ngarewa. He's not a scientist, he's a believer, he said to us yesterday. I'm not asking you to get all spiritual in this, but I'm asking you to recognise the inherent unrecognised biases we all have with dominant knowledge systems. That's how I see it and that's what I'd like to share with you 15 at this point.
(Māori content)
MS CROWLEY: Tēnā koutou. Further to Will's submission, I just want to touch on a 20 few points that come up through our application -- came up through the kōrero yesterday and still remain of significant concern for the iwi of Aotea Waka.
Section 61 of the Act has those great information principles, namely, 25 that if the information is uncertain there is a bias towards environmental protection and caution. We believe there is still a significant amount of uncertainty; that has been demonstrated through some of the questions that have been posed on detail conflicting statements. And that for the purposes of the average submitter, 30 whether that be iwi or that be a community that's affected or an individual, the requirements of Section 39 of the Act haven't really been met, that the applicant is able to describe the activity in detail that people who are adversely affected can understand. This is a non- existing technology in New Zealand. 35 [9.30 am]
In Taranaki we are very familiar with oil and gas exploration. We go through that, but this is something that we haven't seen before in our 40 environment. The level of information consistency and simplicity hasn't been achieved. There is an obligation on the applicant to ensure that those who are not scientists can clearly understand the impact on their traditional fishing grounds, on their communities, on their people. 45 While the Act requires you to consider cumulative effect, we are quite concerned that the extent of the averaging that has gone on in some information that's presented by the applicant and its experts, and are
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concerned at the biodiversity and integrity of ecosystems in the area under consideration has not been detailed. We also have concerns that existing interests overlap and exclusivity haven’t been covered. We've seen an application where mana whenua, Ngāti Ruanui have 5 not commented on cultural issues. The two abutting iwi, Ngā Rauru and Ngāruahine have raised issues and concerns about the impact on our customary rights. Someone outside of the area has spoken on that but the iwi haven't.
10 We have repeatedly voiced concerns about the resourcing of the EPA, and that is no slight on any staff of the DMC; but we have encountered issues throughout this process as simple as a submission not being included, and finding out about a hearing date within the statutory, or not within, outside of the statutory minimum of 20 days' 15 advance notice. We also have concern about the level of effort required and largely led by our whanaunga Ngāti Ruanui to have access to the detail of the reports of the application. There is an inherent power imbalance between iwi and applicants. Across the iwi of Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Ruanui and Ngāruahine, we wouldn’t have a 20 team of four FDE who can look at this. There are hundreds and thousands of pages of technical information, gaps, questions, which you, in doing your job, have called the applicant to answer. The presentation of the information and the challenges go to the inherent concerns that we have about this process. 25 Section 12 requires you to ensure that the process is informed by a Te Ao Māori perspective. We would suggest that the process to date, the expert advice sought, doesn’t sufficiently do that. Even your own report to the DMC talked about the mauri being potentially the single 30 most important issue for consideration from a Te Ao Māori perspective. We're talking about an application that proposes to essentially entirely lift the seabed, a portion of that floor, put it through a bit of a sift and put it back. How that can actually be something that can exist alongside the mauri of that space, I'm not the 35 expert here, Will is, but we can't answer that. How you can take the essence of an environment, rearrange its pieces and still have mauri intact. What does that mean in that area for those who fish? What does it mean when there is a plume that is two to three times the size of the National Park that surrounds our maunga? These are not 40 insignificant impacts. We have not been presented with evidence that reassures us.
[9.35 am]
45 As Ngāti Ruanui submitted yesterday, iwi in Aotea understand the commercial extraction of resources. We all have varying degrees of positivity in our relationships with large multi-nationals who export the environment. We're not convinced. We also would like the DMC
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to consider, in the circumstances where you are presented with an application for an untested technology, with so much detailed, and, I submit, changing evidence throughout the hearing, that Section 68 actually allows you to consider granting a consent separately from 5 any conditions that may occur; and whether that would be a prudent way of approaching any future applications for untested technologies in Aotearoa.
MR SHAW: Could you just expand on that now, please? 10 MS CROWLEY: In the justice system anyone who ends up in front of a court can expect to be heard as to whether something is allowable or not. If the answer is no, then at a later date in time, once that crime has been proven, sentencing occurs. It's the permissibility or otherwise of the 15 activity that we think should be considered separately from any conversation around conditions. When I go back to the imbalance that occurs between the resourcing of the DPMC, the EMA, TTR versus iwi, we are iwi organisations. We have to deal with local resource consents, tangi, other things we have going on inside our 20 organisations. The sheer volume of information that is coming through, with the delays that happen in terms of transcribing the hearing records and the minutes that come out, it is impossible for iwi to appropriately respond to any conditions that come out of changes in a hearing. And I would submit it's actually impossible for the 25 applicant and community and other submitters to do the same.
In terms of due process for untested technologies, we're not talking about a technology we understand and have seen in operation in Aotearoa. It would be appropriate always that you ask the question of 30 merit of awarding of a consent separately from any conditions that may come to it.
MR SHAW: Are you done? I just wondered whether that was a pause to get you on to the next issue. That concludes your submissions at this stage, 35 does it?
MS CROWLEY: We will take some questions and we'd like to make a final comment, if that's all right?
40 MR SHAW: Oh, that's absolutely fine.
MS CROWLEY: Thank you.
MR SHAW: I think you'll find that my colleagues have questions for you, but in 45 fact I'm going to jump the queue and begin.
MS CROWLEY: Chair's prerogative.
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MR SHAW: I want to understand some of the issues you've raised with us, and the particular challenge, I think, associated with trying to balance two knowledge systems and two world-views in terms of our responsibilities. Because those responsibilities, in terms of judging 5 the physical effects on the environment, are laid out pretty clearly in the Act. But I get the sense, Dr Edwards, that that's not precisely what you're talking about, or it is not a sufficient explanation of what you're talking about.
10 DR EDWARDS: What I'm talking about is the need -- and actually the opportunity for this organisation, for the EPA and the science community to employ two lenses simultaneously and to be aware of the power dynamics and perhaps the unconscious bias many of us have, myself included, towards the quantitative and the western scientific principles. 15 MR SHAW: Because it seemed to me that what you were talking about was the - and tell me if I'm wrong - but that it was important for iwi in particular who potentially have interests, and there's no question at all about those interests in respect of the identification of those interests, 20 at least in respect of those within the 12-mile territorial waters and indeed those existing interests represented in respect say, for example, fishing outside those limits.
[9.40 am] 25 DR EDWARDS: Yes.
MR SHAW: I think everybody would agree that these are existing interests that need to be taken into account. 30 What you seem to me to be saying, and what I want to understand more clearly, is that it is critical that the people who are the proprietors of those interests, the owners of those interests, are provided, not just with enough information but with legible or 35 readable information so that they can understand and form judgments. Is that what you were saying to me? That you can't do that simply through the Pākehā lens?
DR EDWARDS: Are you talking about inward information from applicants and from 40 the EPA to the people?
MR SHAW: Yes.
DR EDWARDS: Yes. I think, as my uncle said yesterday, in his words, "We are 45 simple people. We are not scientists". So as Cassandra alluded to earlier, that it's incumbent upon the EPA, as I understand it under the Act, to provide that information in an understandable way to that community. It may or may not be in a Mātauranga Māori lens, it may
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be a combination of the both. But when you see the amount of documentation -- and I know that is a highly technical area we're talking about, highly detailed area we're talking about, but that mode of communication to the local community needs to be done in such a 5 way, through time and through method, in a way that is understandable to that community on their terms.
MS CROWLEY: If I can add to this? I think it would be remiss of us to have this conversation and view the two world systems as separate. 10 Environmental science is one of the last places where we're seeing the integration of traditional knowledge systems with what we might call western knowledge systems. So if we think about the medical industry and actually where we're seeing a lot of patents come from, it's the exploration of traditional knowledge. It's seeking patents and 15 medications based on the ancient wisdoms of indigenous peoples and plants. Now whether that's appropriate, it's a whole other issue. But there is a saying that we've forgotten more than we thought we ever knew.
20 Mātauranga Māori is not a separate and distinct reality. It is a different way of describing a reality that perhaps western science can't yet fully articulate.
MR SHAW: That's one possible view. There are many possible views, it seems to 25 me, in terms of trying to align those different knowledge systems because, of course, what you describe as "the western knowledge system" is the result of a constantly changing framework, isn’t it? It's not just something that was invented last minute or last year, but the knowledge system, the science system that we understand today is 30 very different from that which existed 50 years ago, 100 years ago or 500 years ago.
DR EDWARDS: It certainly is, right back to the scientific revolution in Europe and a view of the universe where the earth was the centre. Those are 35 natural evolutions - or Kuhn would call it a "paradigm shift" from normal science. New evidence is portrayed and it causes a paradigm shift. That's not to say that the evidence we heard yesterday is static either. It's about resourcing -- and I don’t just mean financial resourcing, I mean people, I mean opportunities, I mean perceptions. 40 When you have a knowledge system that has been actively undermined, to say the very least, and compromised, there's an unequal power relationship between those two knowledge systems.
What I'm saying is that both of those knowledge systems are valid. 45 One has a huge amount of infrastructure, understanding and applicability compared to another. They both just are. One isn't better than the other, that is not the point; they both just are. And as an organisation that's operating in the 21st Century in Aotearoa, New
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Zealand, in the South Pacific, it's incumbent on you to explore both of those knowledge systems and to understand the power dynamics and to address those.
5 [9.45 am]
MR SHAW: A challenge for an awful lot more than the DMC, I have to say, Dr Edwards.
10 DR EDWARDS: Agreed.
MR SHAW: Yes. I will turn to my colleagues now. Ms Crowley, you're a lawyer or a planner or what's your role in things?
15 MS CROWLEY: I'm the Kai Tumuaki for the Te Korowai o Ngāruahine Trust, or general manager.
MR SHAW: Yes.
20 MS CROWLEY: I also happen to be a barrister and solicitor and a chartered accountant, amongst other things.
MR SHAW: Why did I have that feeling in terms of the barrister and solicitor element? It was discernible. It was beginning to sound very much a 25 legal submission you were making.
MS CROWLEY: I couldn't possibly comment.
MR SHAW: That's not a bad thing, that's not a bad thing. I just wanted to 30 understand the space we were in.
Look, I will turn to my colleagues now and start with Ms McGarry.
MS McGARRY: I've just got, really, two areas I want to explore and one is this 35 qualitative verse quantitative aspect. And I guess in my experience of a hearings commissioner over the years I've seen occasions when those two things come together, and normally one supports the other and gives evidence that the other is on the right track. In this case you are urging us to focus on the divergence of the qualitative and the 40 quantitative aspects before us.
DR EDWARDS: I'm encouraging you to look at the complementarity between the quantitative and the qualitative, in the first instance, and then see where there's divergence. Quantitative and qualitative within a mix- 45 method approach done well is powerful; but a western scientific plus a Mātauranga Māori, or in this particular situation Mātauranga Aotea is very powerful and full of potential for all of us.
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MS McGARRY: Thank you. In terms of what you said about Section 68 and this having a two-stage process. Conditions and discussion of conditions, much to the angst the submitters through the process, is really a central part of the evaluation of both the level of mitigation and 5 certainty, and the effects -- the prediction of effects. It's likely that wherever this decision goes there will be a break in the process where conditions will be revised and will be recirculated to the parties for further written comment, which is kind of the two-step process within one process. I just wonder whether you can expand any more on 10 what you were saying or whether that two-step process as proposed addresses that?
MS CROWLEY: The answer is both yes and no. So while that deals with everybody being able to submit, if this proceeds, on any conditions, the very real 15 time evolving nature of it to allow people to comment on it prejudices people like us sitting here. I've mentioned the number of combined policy resource we have across three iwi who actually don’t have the luxury of a full-time job sitting here absorbing the absolute plethora of information that comes out on a daily basis from one of these 20 hearings.
So while you may think that you're providing the opportunity for people to submit and comment as you go, there's a bias towards the applicant and they're very well resourced. There's a bias against those 25 who are most affected. We don’t have the resources to be able to keep on top of what's happening, let alone substantively absorb, analyse and comment. We're very lucky to have a person in our community, through Ms Pratt, who has essentially committed her last two years to reading everything related to TTR. No one else can keep 30 up. So the question is, how real, how valid and under what scrutiny would that evolving process fall down?
[9.50 am]
35 MS McGARRY: Yes, well I won't debate the merits of that. I mean, we're working in a statutory box as you're fully aware, but I just want to be clear in your response there that that two-step process will occur regardless of whether or not consent will be granted. Because without doing that two-step process before we make the decision, we have no ability to 40 evaluate and assess what level of mitigation potential conditions could provide. So I just wanted to correct that point that it won't be in this case that we're going to grant consent; we'll go through that next step. We will likely take that next step regardless of whether, and before we've made that decision. 45 MS CROWLEY: Thank you, and I think our point is not that that wouldn't happen but that we aren't adequately able to submit.
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MS McGARRY: Yes, I take your point. I just didn't want you to think that that would be an indication that consent would be granted.
MR SHAW: Mr Coates? 5 MR COATES: Tēnā kōrua.
DR EDWARDS: Tēnā koe.
10 MR COATES: I heard you say that the applicant is not the enemy, it's the effects that the project would have on the environment, and then I think Ms Crowley said that you can't put seven metres of the seabed through a sift and retain its mauri. And so you end up with a situation where you have to oppose the application and not even talk about conditions 15 because there is no alternative. And you've talked about the imbalance of resources between the applicant and the iwi. I'm just wondering -- and you also talked about your reconciling the Māori and western world-views. So it's a very complicated mix of issues when one wants to exploit the resources of Papatūānuku. And I'm 20 wondering, do you see a solution apart from oppose? Is there any solution about coming to terms with this or is it really no option but to oppose? Would more time and more resources have helped you come to a different conclusion?
25 MS CROWLEY: On the basis of the quality of the current application and information, we don’t believe there is any other conclusion we could have reached. Had the application looked different, maybe; but we can't answer that question. What is certain is the quality of the application, the information, the aggregation, the explanation, the expert evidence, we 30 don’t see a way that we can have an adaptive management approach that would be acceptable to us.
MR COATES: You're aware that this is the second time this application has been before a DMC and are there any changes that you think -- well, put it 35 this way, what are the lacks that you've perceived despite the fact that it's a second bite at the cherry? You don’t have to be exhaustive about this.
MS CROWLEY: I think generally there's an unnecessary complexity, an aggregation, a 40 lack of ranges, selective selection of sites for analysis; there's a lot of things that have been done that look as though there's a certain story that's trying to be told. If a more comprehensive set of information had been given that was more transparent about the range of impact and impact in certain sites, not those with just low biodiversity value, 45 we could have more confidence. If actually there was engagement with mana whenua we could maybe have a little bit more confidence about the process. There are a lot of things that - and unfortunately for the applicant given this is their second time around - still are
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seriously lacking both from a Te Ao Pākehā and a Te Ao Māori perspective.
[9.55 am] 5 DR EDWARDS: To add to that, like our relations expressed yesterday, from Ngāti Ruanui and Ngā Rauru, we are not against economic development. It is the level of uncertainty from what we are seeing and what we understand of the science. It is the level of uncertainty that's 10 generated through the unknown cultural impacts upon Ngāti Ruanui in the first instance, Ngā Rauru and Ngāruahine in the second instance. That uncertainty leads us to that conclusion that in its current format we cannot agree to the consent.
15 MR COATES: Thank you very much.
MR SHAW: Mr Thompson?
MR THOMPSON: Dr Edwards and Ms Crowley, I don’t have any questions but I would 20 like to compliment you on the representations that you have made and make the point that the EPA has been pursuing an understanding of Mātauranga Māori now for a couple of years. It's a difficult concept to get our head around. It's difficult for Pākehā to engage constructively without being offensive or feel that we're being 25 offensive in challenging so that we can understand Mātauranga Māori.
DR EDWARDS: Yes.
30 MR THOMPSON: So I'm on the journey, on the journey of understanding and I have my own interpretation of what it means to me, so I'm trying to understand as we go along. But thanks very much for your representation, I think the points you've made are good and I understand that. Thank you.
35 DR EDWARDS: If I may respond, Mr Chair. There is so much opportunity for us as a nation to explore that space, for the EPA, for the science system and our society. Please remember that that conversation, in order to be constructive, must be on the terms of the community. The community that might not have resources that Cassandra referred to, 40 but the infrastructure, the huge bodies of knowledge that are clearly articulated and easily accessible through libraries and databases. That is not the same for the other body of knowledge that needs to be acknowledged. So thank you, Mr Thompson.
45 MS CROWLEY: If I can just make a closing statement?
MR SHAW: Not quite because I'm not finished.
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I want to go to a point that you raised, Ms Crowley, about the order of batting and making a decision on the permissibility of an activity before anything else happens. I'm not trying to be offensive here at all, there's a superficial attraction for that notion, but it doesn't, it 5 doesn't coincide with our responsibilities under the Act. The Act says that this is permissible as an activity provided the effect can be managed. That's what the purpose of the Act says and that brings us, I think, to precisely, to focus on the horns of the dilemma, the broader dilemma in respect of the alignment, the merging of the lenses that Dr 10 Edwards has talked about. But we know that the extraction of resources is permitted by the Act if the effects can be managed, it says so in the plainest possible language. And we have got an Act that we're obliged to interpret and to make our decisions according to that framework, because it also goes on and says we'll make decisions on 15 the basis of the criteria that are set out; and, again, they're quite clear.
And the problem, I think, that you're referring to, and I'm asking you to comment on this because it's a really very important subject and I'm happy to hear from either of you. Because I'm not sure whether 20 you are talking about a question of natural justice, on the one hand, or whether you are talking about the quality of evidence that's going -- it's right back to that first question that I discussed with Dr Edwards, and I think you need to be more clear with us in terms of that issue.
25 MS CROWLEY: Thank you. So we're talking about both.
MR SHAW: I knew you were going to say that but I want to understand where the emphasis lies in terms of your overall submission here.
30 MS CROWLEY: Yes. Ngāruahine and Te Korowai o Ngāruahine are required to walk in two worlds: Te Ao Pākehā as a post-settlement governance entity and Te Ao Māori as the organisation that is the face and representation for the iwi. The submission I made around considering the consent and then the conditions is actually one of due process and 35 natural justice, we cannot simply have the physical time, the intellectual capacity --
MR SHAW: There was no shortage of that, I've got to tell you, on today's performance. 40 MS CROWLEY: I didn't say capability, I said capacity. We're very busy people. To have that space and time to actually even keep up with the conversation, and that actually is not unique to iwi. Every submitter here is doing other things. So that is a real issue in terms of this 45 process, you're very right. It's valid to question where the boundaries lie, how things can be managed but if there's not sufficient process to allow everyone to fully consider those proposals, how much confidence can you, as the Decision-making Committee obliged
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under a legislative framework that that certainty is there? And if not, you end up in Section 61 and you just simply can't award it. So the very process, the timeframe, the evolving nature of it is such that I would suggest you would end up in Section 61 more often than not in 5 circumstances like this for untried technologies in Aotearoa.
[10.00 am]
MR SHAW: The question as to whether or not these technologies are untried is 10 moot, to say the least. But, however, we'll leave it because I don’t think -- of that particular question to one side because it's not, I think, the core of what you're talking to us about.
MS CROWLEY: Correct, and I'll now -- 15 MR SHAW: Look, before you close, and certainly, Dr Edwards, you go first, and then there's the matter for Mr McCabe I wish to raise.
DR EDWARDS: To you. 20 MR SHAW: Okay. Look, I'm going to ask whether there are questions from parties here because I think we are dealing with something that's reasonably substantive and rather more substantial than most things that are presented to us as submissions. 25 Mr McCabe asked a question. Mr McCabe, I'm going to read the question but I'm not going to put it because I think the answer is clear. But, yes, it would help but that's not what we're here to determine. Mr McCabe asks: 30 "In relation to the inability to properly engage in this process and the fact that the EEZ legislation omits inclusion of any financial support provision for submitters, such as environmental legal assistance funding, would the provision of such a fund go some way to 35 addressing this issue?"
I mean, resourcing is obviously a question but I don’t think that's a question that we're going to be concerning ourselves with today, it's just not within our purview. But I wanted to put it in front of people 40 to signal that you'd asked it, Mr McCabe. Yes?
MR McCABE: Thank you, sir, I appreciate you putting that forward. I do have one other question in relation to your last interaction there, if I may?
45 MR SHAW: You've got time to use your email, Mr McCabe.
MR McCABE: It was just from your last interaction, I meant.
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MR SHAW: Okay, away you go.
MR McCABE: Thank you, sir.
5 MR SHAW: Be careful.
MR McCABE: I will be careful, sir.
In relation to permissibility of this activity within the Act, in your 10 view or experience has there been any broad scale public discussion or direct consultation around this particular activity within the waters of Aotearoa?
DR EDWARDS: Is that a question to us? 15 MR SHAW: Oh, it's not to me. I don’t answer questions --
MS CROWLEY: Can we please have it repeated?
20 MR SHAW: -- not even with a light shining in my eyes.
DR EDWARDS: Firstly, I understand these are permitted questions. I spent some time outlining who we are.
25 (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Who is this person who is actually asking this question?
MR SHAW: That is Mr McCabe who is representing KASM. 30 MR McCABE: Aroha mai, I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself.
DR EDWARDS: Kei te pai, KASM.
35 MR SHAW: All right, thank you.
Mr Holm, do you have any questions? No. I don’t think there are any other parties here represented by counsel. We're going to leave it there and now ask you to make your closing. Before you do so, I just 40 want to echo what Mr Thompson has said. I mean, the issues you raise clearly are huge issues and are issues that go way beyond the capability or the capacity of this DCM to deal with. They are issues that obviously on so many levels and in so many spaces confront our society and will do so for a long, long time and resolution is not going 45 to be achieved, whatever decision we make, it's not going to resolve these issues one way or the other. So I think we would all acknowledge that these are broad fundamental questions that confront
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Aotearoa. Anyway on that basis thank you for your presentation and, yes, Ms Crowley, away you go.
[10.05 am] 5 MS CROWLEY: Thank you, Mr Shaw. Ngāruahine, Ngāti Ruanui and Ngā Rauru as the tangata whenua of South Taranaki understand commercial exploitation of the natural environment. We've been in positions for the last 100 years where we have been left to deal with, manage and 10 participate in that mitigation. Our experiences have not always been positive but in a modern environment are generally more positive than they've been through this application. We have seen erosion of our coastline. We have seen promised jobs and economic impact that never result for our people or for our area. We see proposed 15 conditions like kaitiaki reference group and question the validity of those when throughout this process there has been no genuine engagement with tangata whenua or observance of tikanga in terms of going around and asking others to speak on our behalf.
20 You have a legislative framework under which you're required to make this decision. It includes things like cumulative impact, but the impacts are felt in Pātea. The fishing ground exclusions affect individual whānau. The loss of the mauri affects generations. We urge you to appropriately consider the totality of the impacts for our 25 local community.
DR EDWARDS: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: In order to summarise the presentation by Te Korowai O 30 Ngāruahine, Cassandra's absolutely correct when she speaks about the heavy impacts on the environment as well as on the people. It has been said that this area, 66 kilometres, is but a small portion of the ocean but this is the world of Ngāti Ruanui, this is the world of Ngāruahine, this is the world of Ngā Rauru. So look favourably upon 35 us, this is Te Korowai O Ngāruahine which is establishing its pillar, its pillar of kōrua, its pillar of discussion and debate, that it stands strong and also that it be supportive of the position of the statement that was made yesterday by Te Āti Awa that we, humanity, we emerge into the world of light, into total enlightenment. 40 (Māori content)
[10.10 am]
45 MR SHAW: Ladies and gentlemen, I think that brings us to the end, I think, of the submissions and evidence that's been offered by iwi, tangata whenua here and by those proximate iwi, all those iwi in a proximate area of this part of New Zealand.
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I do want to make a comment and I said yesterday that I was looking forward to Monday morning with some apprehension. And the apprehension was justified because things could have gone not very 5 well without too much effort on anybody's part. They didn't go badly. They went well. They went well because people approached this with respect, with dignity and I think with restraint. I have no doubt at all that the evidence and the representations that were made are quite confronting for people in our situation and I think you've got to 10 understand that these are not matters to grapple with, but however difficult they may be they're not a waste of time by any stretch of the imagination. So I thank you all and congratulations on how you've approached it. We are due now to move on to I guess what has been the meat and drink of the inquiry so far and move back into that 15 space. But again farewell, thank you all. It's been an experience. Okay, kia ora and we will move now move to hear Ms Pratt.
Good morning, Ms Pratt.
20 MS PRATT: Good morning.
MR SHAW: Ms Pratt, we are going to - you'll be aware of the fact that there has been some flexibility demonstrated by the Committee in respect of timing. I've got to say, looking at what's coming here, that flexibility 25 is not infinite.
[10.15 am]
MS PRATT: No, I've done it for 15 minutes. If I talk fast I cover it, if I go slower I 30 don't.
MR SHAW: That shows admirable discipline, Ms Pratt, and we'll ask you to begin, thank you.
35 MS PRATT: Thank you. And I just want to say by the way, just before I start, thank you for the opportunity to have asked questions and get them responded to and so forth. I've really appreciated that opportunity, thank you.
40 Right. I'll try and press this button at the right time and remember to. Right. Okay. A quick introduction first. My interest began in the Trans-Tasman project back in 2013. At that stage I couldn't tell you what a cod looked like or what terms like benthic, pelagic and bryozoan, etc, actually meant, nor could I tell you anything much 45 about sediment. Four things at the beginning motivated me to find out more about the project. At the TTR presentation in 2013 I met a local fisherman and asked him what was life offshore like, and I was amazed by what he had to say and somewhat astounded that I could
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have lived in Hawera for 18 years with that lack of knowledge. I then knew there was something worth being interested about because, to my shame, I'd never stopped to think about what was out there and probably just thought of it as a flat grey mass of sand. So then I was 5 interested to know what the impacts would be and so began my journey of reading all the TTR documents and then on to reading international journal articles and Ministry for Primary Industry reports, etc. Two critical learning tools have been reading this book here, The Living Reef, which is about the ecology of New Zealand's 10 rocky reefs put together by 30 authors with technical support from NIWA and the Ministry of Fisheries and, secondly, learning through an MBIE funded citizen science project, receiving videos and photos from a subtidal reef.
15 I can understand why section 59(2)(d) and (e) states the EPA must take into account ecosystems and processes. My presentation will illustrate how TTR have not provided ecosystem information and how, under section 61(c) the DMC must regard this as inadequacy in the information available. I note that a further two years has elapsed 20 since the first application with no diver transacts, no reef surveys, no macro-algae surveys, despite being aware of the materially large reductions in light that had been modelled. This information could have been provided without unreasonable cost, effort or time.
25 Even more concerning for me have been the photos and NIWA reports that fail to show the vitality of life on the reefs. Local video and pictures have added a fundamental depth of understanding. I am far from satisfied that the conditions for the purpose of section 59(2)(j) will resolve the significant uncertainties. 30 My submission - as you know, a lengthy document - covers nearly all the conditions as I felt they did not offer the protection required. Of concern, a critical condition that DOC emphasised the importance of last time, as did I, is not included in the conditions. The EPA 2014 35 decision found interests of local fishermen were far greater than TTR had represented and, again in this application, TTR has not asked for any information from local fishermen and divers.
MR SHAW: Can I just ask you to do one thing for me, Ms Pratt, and I'm sorry to 40 interrupt? The earlier decision on the first application, if anything is being relied upon there by witnesses or anybody else, you need to set it out for us and tell us what it is because we're not using the decision in itself as a resource. That's just simply because we've got to deal with this application. So in terms of the critical condition that you 45 talk about, you need to tell us what it is.
MS PRATT: Yes, so I've got that in here, in this document here.
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MR SHAW: Okay. Tell us what it is as well so that we can understand the narrative.
MS PRATT: Okay. Basically it was output condition and Longdill said that was 5 critical and it shouldn't be at all a PSD input. And I understand there's been quite a lot of debate about PSD input.
MR SHAW: Okay, fine. Thank you.
10 MS PRATT: Right. Section 59(2)(m) is local and regional economic considerations. These have been materially overinflated. The report suffers from lack of transparency; that is descriptions and my ability to reconcile numbers from tables through to the impact assessment. Material line items have no document support. Input costs are 15 substantial for this project. Royalties and taxes are uncertain without an understanding of the ultimate ownership of TTR and some tax advice on pricing mechanisms and deductible expenses.
[10.20 am] 20 I feel very uncomfortable with the lack of independent involvement in the obtaining of samples for sediment and metal testing. I feel uncomfortable with the fact that the limitations with both sediment and metal testing have not made their way through to joint witness 25 statements. And I feel uncomfortable at the number of parties involved in this hearing who have not conducted a detailed review of HR Wallingford's work. I feel uncomfortable that the samples provided by TTR have not been independently vouched as being statistically representative. The key issues report missed material 30 details about impacts and the conditions report referred to the key issues report when discussing impacts. And so, as such, neither report reported on some of the most important ecological impacts from this project. The conditions report failed to describe the project adequately missing out grinding, a fundamental part of the operation, 35 and the desalination plant.
PowerPoint 1 in front of you there: section 59(2)(a)(i) cumulative effect. The scale of TTR's operation is huge on a world scale. Not only is the project bigger than most dredging operations worldwide 40 but it is also a processing factory, grinding ore which is highly energy intensive, which leads its IMV to be one of the largest heavy fuel oil consumers on the international seas. A condition for monitoring emissions onshore needs including. The coastline is not unpopulated as TTR suggested it was in the emissions report. 45 Two, I just have to -- by the way, I just want to point out there, if you look on the far right, Palm Island, when Dearnaley said it was similar to other dredging operations, and then I did this graph and I said,
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"Actually, no, it's not". I've looked all around the world looking for dredging operations of this scale and I couldn't find any. When he said, "Oh, no, I'm talking about big reclamation projects, example Palm Island". So I did it there and it's nowhere near the scale. 5 Because also we're talking about length as well, total volume there.
Energy intensive, I especially want to note magnetite is energy intensive to release.
10 Next point, number 2, coming up on your scale there, the EPA section 59(2)(i). The EPA must take into account best practice in relation to an industry or activity. Around the world efforts to move away from heavy fuel oil are occurring. The photo at the top there is of a dredging vessel to be built in 2019 with a capacity to run on LNG. I 15 recommend to the DMC that New Zealand follows the intention of MARPOL although we are not signatory to annex 6.
Number 3, by the way I asked for an equivalent vessel and -- just very recently and TTR gave the Queen Mary, and as you can see there, the 20 actual heavy fuel oil tonnage used by that ship is half of TTR's. And the reason it is so heavily -- needing of heavy fuel oil is because it goes fast. So we're comparing a vessel that stays in one place and uses all its energy for grinding ore, etc. There's no comparison. By the way, one of my questions was how much is it to convert away 25 from heavy fuel oil and Shawn Thompson didn't choose to answer that in the transcript. I guessed about 45 million.
Number 3, I note in the transcript, I think it was Sharon talked about heavy fuel oil and climate change. I'm well aware that we don't 30 discuss that at the EEZ hearing, and shipping is excluded from the emission trading scheme. My concern is about air quality. And that, by the way, is quite a -- I never really knew what heavy fuel oil looked like when it was burnt. It's the dirtiest fuel. And I think it's of note there that heavy fuel oil, if you look at the sulphur content, 35 35,000 parts per million so no wonder in Europe, etc, they're looking to lower that with marine gas oil, 1,000 compared to 35,000.
Right. Just before I forget to -- I might forget to talk about this, I think in terms of insurance and installations, I think there's a 40 maximum of 25 million. I just want to -- the ship installation thing if I forget about coming back to it.
Number 4, this is the kind -- we were just talking about transparency and understandability. And this is what I've had to do, after years of 45 trying to read this, to get my mind around this project. And these are kind of 3D diagrams that would've been really good to have had. So I've graphed the tonnage extraction over the sites, Christina, on your far left all the way to X2, far right, and determined that these high-
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grade ore areas will be mined in ten years. So in this context a 35- year term is not acceptable based on the information provided so far by TTR. And I understand after this high-grade ore they'll go to the low-grade ore, but we don't have any detail or any sort of diagrams 5 like this.
[10.25 am]
Number 5, section 59(2)(d) and 2(e), Dr Chiffing(?) states in the 10 transcript that TTR have not justified the sediment model domain as being the ecosystem. As I noted earlier, TTR have done no work on ecosystems which I define as being a much smaller scale than the SMD. By the way, there is no limit on scale under the convention of biological diversity. 15 Six, yes, that's six. TTR's opening comments in the hearing were that work has been done on the environment and that the BEMP would not be used for establishing the environment, the work has been done. I say it is has not. 20 Seven, section 39(1)(3), reasonable effort. I do not believe TTR has made a reasonable effort to identify the ecosystem and I've given you some examples there. We know bryozoans provide the same role as a coral reef, and between Hawera and Whanganui there is a higher than 25 average species richness. The project site has a good density of bryozoans. Where is the ecological linkage there? We don't know.
I just want to point out the environment -- the spending for TTR, plenty obviously in defining the resource and that's the point there on 30 environmental that they've spent.
We come to the plume. The plume is not worst-case. It will not show ecological load, for example when conditions result in reduced or nil flocculation. I'll carry on. Yes, and I'll raise again the fact -- the lack 35 of experts and non-experts conducting a detailed review of that plume modelling information.
Ten, this is just an example for you locally so you can understand. As you know the density of leatherjackets offshore is huge. Now what 40 do leatherjackets associate with? Reefs and sponges. And you can see the plant there, it's ecklonia. Juveniles recruit into ecklonia. Blue cod, that's the fish that the fishermen catch around here in huge numbers, they associate with reefs and bryozoans. And the juvenile snapper associate with reefs. See my common theme here about reefs 45 and the organisms that grow on them, and yet where's the mapping that TTR have done on reefs?
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Eleven, sponges. This is a big issue. Sponges have a density on the crack that we talked about at length. It could be a sponge garden or a sensitive environment. No sponge experts have been involved in this. Yes, so no survey work for sponges, no sponge expert. 5 Twelve, there are plenty of -- you can go on the internet, yes, and I quote, "Phenomenal fluxes of matter and energy from sponges". They are significant locally and regionally, their impact on food webs. So considering how significant they are it's really surprising no 10 work, no sponge expert.
Here is the map. The map on the right is one I've drawn from a survey of about ten locals about their reef spots and fishing spots. And the funny shapes there are foul ground for a recreational 15 fisherman. Doesn't this picture show a vastly different picture from TTR. Look up the top there on your left, the brown bits are the reefs, and the bottom bit -- by the way, in blue there are DOCs reefs which TTR used, and then, for some reason, all those blue reefs disappeared in their map. Now if you consider that the nearshore survey showed 20 two reefs accounting for 61 per cent of all species collected; right.
Now there is a saying, "The devil's in the detail" and here you see the importance of small-scale use of sounders. So this is from a commercial fishing vessel here and you can see numerous small reefs 25 or foul ground shown as red here. They all lie in close proximity to the project. See that round blobby thing? Where's my map? You're familiar with map 45 in the bathymetric map so you'll be familiar with the area I'm talking about here, the white -- are you? Shall I -- just in case you're not because it's quite important. So this is here 30 (off mic conversation). Right. So this is quite powerful. All these reefs here, not on any maps. No ecology. No food web done. I first of all thought these were corals but I think they might be bryozoans.
[10.30 am] 35 Fifteen, these are the reefs mapped by the newer benthic survey. All of these reefs, low-lying. And as I've mentioned to you before, if you talk to any local there's far more medium and higher reefs out there, again not surveyed. 40 Sixteen, how can TTR understand the local ecology when their reef fish report results do not reflect the local environment? I've got some examples here. The oblique triplefin, eight compared to the report saying two. No, sorry, 60 in my project there up on the left, see how 45 many triplefins there are? And this report says on average you see 2.6. This is classic over the next page here, we have there the common roughy. In the report, on the right there, it says they're rare. Well there you are, look at our project reef there's at least 20 there.
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Right. This is a critically important point I'd like to make. TRC notes that if there are more reefs than indicated in TTR's application - and I think I've shown you clearly there are - then the effects of the plume 5 on macro-algae will be greater than predicted. And what amazes me - this is phenomenal - look at the arrow I've got there pointing at ecklonia, and I've got a little picture there of the leatherjacket who associates with ecklonia. One occurrence; they only found one occurrence of ecklonia in their whole survey and yet we know there's 10 a massive density of leatherjackets out there and leatherjackets need ecklonia as part of their lifecycle. There's a huge gap.
Page 19. All right. This is point 45 of the TRC report and it just notes even a light dusting can affect the early life stages of kelp and 15 that sponges and bryozoans are susceptible, but we know there's been no work on sponges.
This is another report that I believe -- I couldn't find anywhere in any of the impact assessment or any of the TRC's information, and this 20 was part of a meeting paper between TTR and the TRC. And 704 kilometres could be impacted by up to 20 per cent for phytoplankton primary production. I mean that's a huge percentage.
Twenty-one, the Graham Bank euphotic zone: last application 50 per 25 cent reduction, massive. This time 31 per cent. Now there's journals everywhere about the impact due to dredging. In the Gorgon project in Australia there was up to 65 per cent reduction in benthic light over one to six months, and up to 9 kilometres away a reduction of 29 per cent. 30 These next ones are about metal testing. This diagram clearly shows the lack of metal testing. Also illustrated is how limitations are not put in reports. On the far right there I've got page 17 of the environmental risk assessment done for the Ministry for the 35 Environment. And in that report Vopel's cautionary note about how limited the depth testing was and how limited the geographic sampling wasn't even mentioned. And this is a big point that I have, and a real concern I have, that limitations in the detail of reports are not finding their way through. So if we look at that graph there, for 40 example, you see X2 on the far right, no metal testing. D2, no metal testing. And then I'll show you the impact of -- if you go over here -- these are the five samples that were taken. And in yellow there you'll see -- let's take D2 there, second in from the right. Look, no samples for 3 metres, 4 metres, 5 metres, 6 metres, 7 metres, 8 45 metres, 8.5 metres and yet they're going to the depth there. So all those yellow areas are showing you depths that haven't been tested.
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Where are we? Twenty-five. This diagram here shows the impacts of metals from fine grinding. So see that tall column there, that's when the ore has gone through a fine grind. And we have no independent verification of how TTR's going to be grinding. And this makes a big 5 impact on metals. And also all of that testing, by the way, was done with a different technology than TTR are going to use, that's ball- milled grinding and they're going to use a Vertimill. Yes.
Number 26, I raised the question about my concern about the samples 10 and TTR say it's difficult to obtain samples. Well, I find that surprising considering -- yes, anyway I find it surprising.
[10.35 am]
15 Right. This shows the impact of iron ore grade. And this is why we have to be really careful. You can see that partway through the hearing they, TTR, last time, they changed the grading of their ore and of course that affects your output. So we have to be very careful 20 when TTR say, "Oh, look, these are the results of our output for so many years", say ten years, and we go, "Oh, great, we can be a bit more relaxed". And then all of a sudden they go into the low-grade ore. It's just to show you the impact that ore has.
25 Twenty-eight, I really stress this is very important and I agree with the EPA adviser about conditions being set on discharge. But I would caution you, with all the information that's in the previous application DOC spent a lot of time talking about those conditions in regards to this. 30 Right, where are we? Twenty-nine. Okay, so this is, Alick, when I was talking about -- I had it somewhere in here. This is the report that I'm talking about. So last time there was an output condition here of less than 8 microns on the left there, 48 tonnes. But this time we've 35 changed it completely to input conditions, and note that wonderful word "averaged". And there's a huge danger in that, and I stressed that hugely last time and DOC stressed it hugely. And I find it really fascinating that DOC apparently has supported these conditions when Longdill went to great lengths to explain how he didn't want it to be 40 an input condition. Here we are, and here's Longdill here. And this is a summary from the EPA, this is the decision.
Where are we? Thirty. Sorry. Down the bottom there we see in response to your section 44 request from DOC, I'm really curious 45 about how much detail Dr Longdill actually had. Yes, that could be a vulnerability there.
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MR SHAW: And that, I've got to say, is entirely speculative. That's for Dr Longdill to tell us should he choose to do so.
MS PRATT: Right. But unfortunately we've also been told that DOC supports the 5 conditions and then when we look for the evidence of how much information have you used to base that decision on we're left with nothing, so our baseline is shaky.
MR SHAW: That's a matter for DOC. 10 MS PRATT: Yes, well.
MR SHAW: Anyway.
15 MS PRATT: Yes, anyway. Right. This here is a really important graph, I believe. Averages, see those spikes. If you report on averages you don't know where the spikes are and obviously ecologically that's where the danger is.
20 Thirty-two, this is an example of the Director General saying, "Delete your monthly average and amend that three-month running average that TTR suggests and put it to a seven-day running average". And I do stress the importance, the EPA, in their decision report, got me totally wrong and I spent a lot of time talking about this so I re- 25 emphasise it again just in case I haven't explained it very well; I do not agree with three-month rolling averages.
Right, 33. We have here from Dearnaley his worst-case scenario. Totally disagree that you're getting the worst-case for the plume 30 modelling.
Thirty-four, here's one. TTR say there'll be times when the extraction will be greater than 8,000 tonnes per hour to catch up on down time. So, for example, when they mine up to 10,000 tonnes, well that's not 35 been factored into the plume modelling. So that's just one illustration.
Thirty-five, this is in light of the recent Cawthron report indicating that the South Taranaki Bight could be more ecologically diverse. Again, that just re-emphasises to me the importance of doing some 40 ecosystem work. This is just an example of something that's got totally lost. I've seen this, I put it in my submission. Can you see the diagram of your bow, your thrusters that will be going to keep the ship in line? And its right by the tailings discharge point. This hasn't been mentioned anywhere, not by the experts, not in the hearing, 45 nothing.
Noise. I think the lack of effort by TTR to identify all noises with the operation does not meet the intention of the Act. It did not take me
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too much effort to find an iron ore processing plant in Australia who had to provide an operational noise plan. These figures need to be added to TTR's working on a robust noise propagation. So TTR haven't provided you the sound from the grinding mill. It's the major 5 thing, an energy intensive thing grinding. So here we are, use those figures there. This information's available at not much cost and with ease.
[10.40 am] 10 I'd like to suggest that over in Australia the people doing dredging have to put some money into this dredging science node. And I suggest we could follow there.
15 I'd like to point out the ecological impact is huge there. This is just on microalgae because I'd like to stress seaweeds, totally forgotten about. And why they're forgotten about: because we don't know about the reefs. But anyway we're talking about little microalgae here and look at the percentage reduction, 30 - 43 per cent last time and for 20 some funny reason the area's got bigger so your percentage obviously reduces. But still a 27 per cent reduction there. These are huge percentages.
And you are probably well aware, Panel, but this is a phenomenally 25 important thing, the red shows you how much vast area that's shallow in this local environment. So put on top of that your reefs, and light, and seaweeds and you have an amazingly productive ecology. This is incredibly powerful. Before TTR did their research this is how many sponges that were recorded in the OBIS database: one. One sponge. 30 Now you've seen the photos, haven't you, of my project reef and the amount of sponges there and the video of the crack and the amount of sponges that are there. So this was the knowledge about South Taranaki. So whenever we have a comment that it's not as ecologically diverse as the rest of New Zealand, have a look at the 35 sampling that's been done: one sponge. And this is another dataset, NIWA's specified database, and they only had two.
I'd like to say to you that -- where are we? Sorry. Forty-two, conditions must be set for the fiftieth percentile and I show you an 40 example from last time of why that's so important. There's a big discrepancy there between the mining and non-mining at the fiftieth percentile.
The less than 8 micron, wow, how that's changed. Can you see on the 45 far left we've got there almost 400,000 tonnes of the less than 8 microns. It's halved under this modelling which, by the way, you've equivalent to an Olympic sized pool of mud. But then on top of that you have this magnificent trapping rate applied to this so it's even
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more reduced. So I think we've really got to say to ourselves how sure can we be that the modelling that we've got this time, is it really that far superior to what we had last time and I don't think it is.
5 Forty-four, are we? Yes. Transparency as to ecological impacts are hindered when the key issues report - a really important document - doesn't list all the different percentages. It should be bang, right up front in the key issues report: there's going to be this percentage reduction, and this percentage reduction, and reduction in this, and 10 those percentages aren't there.
And then, finally, the key issues report fails to describe TTR's process properly. The discharge from the hyperbaric disc filtration is not clean. And fundamentally - on 21 there - they list all the activities of 15 TTR and it misses the grinding of the ore, that's the thing that uses that massive amount of heavy fuel oil, and it misses the desalination plant.
Thank you, that's my -- you've been very tolerant, thank you. 20 MR SHAW: Look, seriously, it's not a huge issue but this is not a theatrical performance so let's hold off on the applause, please. Look, I've been very tolerant but my tolerance will not be pushed. This is a hearing and nothing else. 25 Okay. We're going to take a break for coffee now and we'll come back and see if there are questions for Ms Pratt.
ADJOURNED [10.44 am] 30 RESUMED [11.06 am]
MR SHAW: All right everybody. Thank you, Ms Pratt. Mr Thompson, do you have questions for Ms Pratt? 35 MR THOMPSON: Ms Pratt, just one thing that I and the DMC have been struggling to come to terms with is the extent of the reefs and other life giving formations around the project, in particular inshore of the project. So anything that you've got there, and you have presented some pictures, 40 is extremely valuable to us as we endeavour to rebuild a picture of what is there. So thanks very much and if you've got any more detailed information or broader information that would be helpful to us too.
45 MS PRATT: What sort of timescale? Because unfortunately because I've been so busy trying to do the other stuff, that more productive stuff of doing the reefs. Like, give me a week and I'll talk to 30 people and I'll
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document heaps more reefs for you. I can definitely do that for you now that I've finished my bit.
MR THOMPSON: Good. Well, we're still actively involved in the process and will be 5 for weeks.
MS PRATT: Okay, because I think a particularly powerful thing, like incredibly powerful, is a GIS system and so I get the data from the commercial guys and the recreational guys and, as I say, I've only done less than 10 10 but I can give you 40, 50 in a week, put it in the GIS system. Then if you say, "Hey, this spot here, whose is it?" you can chat to that guy and say, "Tell me about your reef". And I'll tell you if it's 8 metres or 5 metres or 2 metres, because at the moment all the Trans-Tasman stuff is shallow reefs and the DOC stuff is shallow reefs, but you'll 15 have some fishermen talking to you today and they'll give you examples of more high profile --
MR THOMPSON: And we'll be asking them the same question too, so it's the formation and what's there, yes. 20 MS PRATT: Yes, cool.
MS McGARRY: Just to follow that up, I'm not sure that we have anything to show us the location of the crack that you've talked about. 25 MS PRATT: The location, he's --
MS McGARRY: So perhaps when you're looking at putting the location of the reefs together -- 30 MS PRATT: Yes, I think I gave it to KASM via cell phone and I can show you right now if you want, on this map.
MS McGARRY: Yes, but it would be good if you provided something in terms of a 35 document.
MS PRATT: Okay, so this is what the guy who knows this spot told me, that it goes here sort of like that for 4 nautical miles. So you won't find it on a map anywhere, and it's about that wide roughly, and about that high, 40 I think. I've got a longer video. You might have seen the Facebook one that I did, a shorter version, so I've got actually a longer video. Because what the local guys tend to do, they actually take videos only looking for crayfish and kina and I didn't particularly want to put that on Facebook because then everyone will go, "I want to go get my 45 kina and my crayfish" so I'm trying to kind of do the ecological diversity, if you like, is what I'm trying to show on Facebook. So, yes, you've got heaps of him swimming over this reef, so there's a longer video I could give you.
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[11.10 am]
MS McGARRY: Thank you. I just wanted to congratulate, or commiserate might be 5 the right word, on the time that you've spent on both the original application and this one. I think what Mr Shaw has tried to point out is that we are looking at this application in isolation from this last one --
10 MS PRATT: Absolutely, yes, and I understand that from the transcript, yes.
MS McGARRY: -- and that's where you have a different pair of glasses on than we do in that compare and contrast.
15 MS PRATT: True, yes.
MS McGARRY: But I just wanted to say, you talked about particularly the conditions and the evidence of Dr Longdill last time, that if you want us to have any regard to that you need to provide that part and I think that's been 20 quite clear from the beginning of the process, that we will not be looking over our shoulder as to the last process. So if you want us to have regard to what DOC was proposing and the position, you're saying, that Longdill took last time, you need to provide that for us, and we've made it clear to all the parties to do that. 25 MS PRATT: Yes.
MS McGARRY: In terms of an overall view, the applicant is of a mind that they've provided a lot of information that wasn't provided last time. I just 30 wanted an overall sense, without spending too long on this, what do you think are the differences in the application this time?
MS PRATT: I think that was kind of the disappointing thing because if I look at the categories, recreational fishermen. I noted last time the decision 35 makers made a note of, but again they didn't come and say, "Tell us, are there lots of reefs? Will you describe them, lots of plant life?"
MS McGARRY: So that local knowledge wasn't incorporated?
40 MS PRATT: Yes. Then things like -- coming from an audit background you always look at -- I find it quite incredulous almost that a massive company can't do a spreadsheet and go, "We have a grinding machine, we have a desalination plant" and then, like I just went to, go to Sino Iron in Australia who do iron ore and get the detail and 45 propagate this spreadsheet of all the noises. Then it doesn't waste everyone's time, my time and Lee Torres' time, and everybody else's time saying, "We don't know the full sound details". Then what worries me is, if you gave consent and they did it and then it
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massively exceeds it, and they turn around and go, "Well, you never asked us for a spreadsheet of all the noises, oops" and everyone looks a bit silly. It's just --
5 MS McGARRY: Okay, so noise, so if we don't go into --
MS PRATT: So, noise, okay, sedimentation. Put it this way, last application there was about 40 detailed pages talking about the plume modelling. This time around the audit trail quite honestly is quite horrendous, to be 10 honest. I'm familiar with -- I've put a lot of work into it, right? It shouldn't be that difficult, it should be nice and easy from one table to another table, and explanations, you might have graphs in here, and there's no explanations. So I found the information last time much clearer, easy to understand. So I actually felt - sedimentation - that it 15 was difficult, a difficult audit trail and also the assumptions. I'll just give you an example, 38 - 90 microns was included in plume modelling last time, not this time, but nobody is talking about it. There's a total gap. In here we don't even sort of talk about it, other than the fact that it falls 100 per cent down to the ground, it's gone, 20 wiped out, all that tonnage.
MS McGARRY: I think the experts have tried to focus on the importance of the fine particles because they are the ones that will keep being re-suspended and moving in the environment. 25 MS PRATT: But no, because you see each sediment has its own little characteristic, if you --
MS McGARRY: Yes, I understand that. I read your entire 700 pages so, believe me, 30 I've got every single point you've made and we have posed those to the experts.
[11.15 am]
35 MS PRATT: Okay, yes. So I suppose the big thing as well is ecology, isn't it? Like, it was indicated that DOC raised far more reefs than we know about. So that was kind of raised and it was in people's consciousness and I didn't at that stage really know much about the reefs, but TTR didn't follow up on trying to -- they knew from their samples that, 40 wow, 67 per cent of our species that we found totally on that near shore sample came from two reefs. The follow on from that is this is where the biological diversity is, that's where 66 per cent of our species came from. What kind of understanding can we have of what's out here? 45 Then they've been in negotiations with Taranaki Regional Council closely and so they knew about the Cawthron report, and again it's the element of transparency that's been missing; just front up with it. We
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were in discussions with TRC and there's a sensitive habitats thing, potentially there could be. "Gosh, if we're going to go ahead we'll do some more sampling" or --
5 MS McGARRY: So you felt it was more transparent last time?
MS PRATT: No, they weren't transparent last time.
MS McGARRY: No, okay. 10 MS PRATT: Well, noise wasn't done, was it, and everybody has wasted hours of time saying, "Why don't you do it?"
MR SHAW: Look, I'm sorry to interrupt. We are not interested in last time. 15 MS PRATT: No, I haven't got a problem with that, yes.
MR SHAW: Please let me finish. We are interested in this application.
20 MS PRATT: I understand totally, yes.
MR SHAW: Good. It's unhelpful to be going back to making comparisons.
MS PRATT: Sorry, but I was just asked by Sharon what was the difference 25 between --
MS McGARRY: Well I was actually asking really what the difference is this time, not what you didn't have last time or what you had more of, but what do you think you're missing this time. That's where the compare and 30 contrast was, but I think you've answered your key areas already, so that's fine.
MR SHAW: Mr Coates.
35 MR COATES: Tēnā koe, Ms Pratt.
MS PRATT: Hello.
MR COATES: I was impressed by the way you've summarised your Eastlight folder 40 of evidence into this presentation, which you've managed to get through right to the end.
MS PRATT: Thank you.
45 MR COATES: It's tempting to ask questions to clarify things but I'm really just going to ask you: if there's one message you want us to take away from your evidence, what would it be?
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MS PRATT: I think it's a courtesy to the community and a courtesy to experts, other than Trans-Tasman Resources, that the baseline they do provide, the data, is as strong as it can be. So, for example, say it's minimal samples or whatever, just make sure they are all to 5 metres, 5 it's that kind of thing. If you're going to talk about noise, just give everyone the courtesy of starting off and propagate all the noise. It's the starting point for everybody then to start having some meaningful engagement instead of wasting time all the time saying, "We haven't put this in and we haven't put that in". 10 So I think that's the biggest message, that if we're going to have meaningful dialogue let's just get some simple things -- and the legislation talks about unreasonable effort and cost and I just don't think that's been done. 15 MR COATES: Thank you very much.
MR SHAW: Thank you, Ms Pratt. I think we should be now seeing Mr McLay. Welcome, Mr McLay. 20 MR McLAY: Thank you. Is there any technology to learn here, Mr Chair, or do I just talk?
MR SHAW: If there is it would elude me, Mr McLay. 25 MR McLAY: Right, thank you. By way of introduction I am the Director of Resource Management at the Taranaki Regional Council. I have worked there most of my life, apart from a short period working for industry, and I am responsible for the Council's policy, consents, 30 monitoring and enforcement. I'm not going to go through all the submission but I'd like to just raise a few key points, and thank the EPA for the opportunity to present.
I'm presenting a submission on behalf of the 11 councillors elected by 35 the regional community and wish to acknowledge the work carried out by TTR between the first application that we submitted on, on this one, particularly in terms of the modelling, the suspended sediment level setting work, and also from our contact in the community there has been broader community consultation, notwithstanding that some 40 parties didn't wish to engage.
[11.20 am]
At paragraph 10 I wish to draw your attention to the consent 45 conditions and the importance of looking at those, and I respectfully suggest that given the input that's been made to those that they be given due consideration. The Council is a regulator, like the EPA. We struggle perhaps to realise our role as a submitter versus a
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regulator because the waves and currents don't stop at the 12 nautical mile boundary, and so there are effects of this proposed application on our turf as well as yours, so we wish to acknowledge our work in that regulator area. 5 We participated the first time around and we think that that process was very useful in sorting the wheat from the chaff, as it were, and the remaining key issues for us are about the uncertainties about the cumulative effects of the sediment plume on primary product and 10 increased smothering within the broader marine environment; and acknowledging that while the application is yours, a lot of the effects are on our turf.
At paragraph 21 I note the policy framework that's set out from our 15 regional policy statement and regional coastal plan, and acknowledge - having to seek some water here, some good Taranaki water - that is one of 13 matters the DMC have to consider. Now, I'm not going to get into the matters raised from paragraph 23 below in terms of the physical effects of this proposed activity, because you've heard expert 20 evidence on all of that. So I'm going to skip that and I'm going to go over to paragraph 41 where I note that when we first ran our regional coastal plan process the north and south traps clearly came out as key outstanding natural features in this environment. The model that's tabled notes some impacts on those. 25 In terms of the offshore mid-shore reefs and Pātea shoals you've heard evidence on that from a number of parties, and you've had expert conferencing on that. I make some comments around adapted management but I now acknowledge that this is more akin to 30 environmental management, which has given rise to some proposed suspended sediment levels, and the process within the consent to refine those. Acknowledging that we are a regulator as well and acknowledging that the EPA doesn't have a local presence, we're extremely interested in a collaborative approach between the two 35 organisations, should you grant the consent.
I might catch up a bit of time here, given the speed that I'm going.
MR SHAW: Much appreciated. 40 MR McLAY: So in summary, to the regional council this application boils down to two key considerations. The key environmental effect that's associated with the plume, and you've heard the local values associated with the area and the impacts that the plume may have on 45 those values, and those values are associated with tangata whenua values, underwater club and fisheries. But I also acknowledge that you've had considerable expert conferencing around a lot of the matters that have been raised around the plume and its impacts.
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The EEZ is a bit different to the RMA where one of the key matters of consideration is economics. So I just note there if the impacts are acceptable in terms of the evidence that the DMC hears, and are offset 5 by the economic gain, then that's a key consideration.
[11.25 am]
The final point I'd like to make is along the lines of if the application 10 is granted, given the cross-boundary effects, the TRC would like to be involved where possible in the regulation of this activity. Thank you for hearing me and apologies for losing my voice.
MR SHAW: Mr McLay, just before we move to questioning, is this going to be 15 your only appearance or will you be coming back to talk to us at another time in respect of the section 44 request?
MR McLAY: I intended this to be my only appearance, but --
20 MR SHAW: Fine. Well, that being the case, I wonder if you could direct your attention to the section 44 request as well and tell us if there's anything you want to expand on there?
MR McLAY: Okay, sure. So the DMC requested information about dredging, 25 previous dredging activities in the region, and I tabled a monitoring report associated with the Port Taranaki dredging, which is pretty self-explanatory. It's nowhere near the same scale as proposed with this application, however, it is useful insight into how such an activity could be regulated with conditions and monitoring and so on. I also 30 provided a copy of a Cawthron report that your members will be familiar with that basically arose out of our work around the coastal plan. Basically while we were looking at developing rules in our part of the coastal marine area we decided to commission Cawthron to do a desktop assessment of what was out there. As I understand that, it 35 used a lot of the TTR data and one of the key conclusions from this report was, and I'll read it:
"While this investigation yielded results that suggest sensitive marine habitats and threatened taxa are likely to exist within the area, further 40 physical investigation will be required to confirm the records, densities, and spatial extents."
So that's a summary of those.
45 MR SHAW: Look, I'd like to start and just go to the section 44 matters very briefly. You said that you thought it provided assistance to people who are interested in regulating the effects of this activity. Are there any particular comments you want to make when you look at the
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monitoring activity that you undertook as a Council? Have you looked at the conditions being proposed and any comment to make about the adequacy or otherwise of those conditions?
5 MR McLAY: A key issue to do with the dredging consents were the effects on inshore reefs and tangata whenua values, so the monitoring focused on the impact of sediment discharges and sediment movement in that environment and impacts on those key reefs. There was less concern about the physical dumping in the offshore area and the effects that 10 might have because a lot of the area is naturally pretty sandy. So we did some marine ecological work and science around that and measured control sites, measured sediment movement by putting some radioactive traces and different things on it. So we have some experience in that, which is probably applicable here in terms of -- 15 MR SHAW: Bear in mind that you are talking to us and the information is important for us, but it is also important I think for people who are in the gallery to also understand some of what you're saying. So you talked about the difference in scale in respect of the dredging activity 20 compared to the TTR proposal. Let's talk about time for a moment; the dredging activity occurred over what periods?
MR McLAY: It occurs sort of intermittently over, as I recall, every couple of years.
25 MR SHAW: I think it was 2013 and 2011 in the case of the material we've got, yes?
MR McLAY: Yes, so it occurs intermittently and involves a volume in the order of 600,000 or 700,000 cubic metres of mainly sand. 30 MR SHAW: Right, and in terms of the monitoring activity you undertook, you were dealing with an increase in turbidity of what sort of scale?
MR McLAY: There was a plume from it. Our focus was more on the effects of the 35 plume as opposed to the plume itself.
MR SHAW: So rather than measuring it. But you'd have some notion of what sort of suspended solids were in there, or not?
40 [11.30 am]
MR McLAY: No, it was more about effects and outcomes rather than the --
MR SHAW: Right. So I'm going to ask there why you took that approach of 45 looking into the effects rather than beginning, if you like, with the nature of the beast, for want of a better word?
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MR McLAY: Because we looked at the submissions we received, the values that were at play, and they were to do with tangata whenua values around kai moana on reefs, and marine ecological values.
5 MR SHAW: So it was very focussed on food gathering and the health of those species in particular in terms of the input you'd had, is that what you're saying?
MR McLAY: Yes, and another key aspect of this was trying to put sand back on 10 New Plymouth's beaches, so hence the radioactive tracer. That was another key resource management issue that we addressed.
MR SHAW: Did you have to deal with those broader issues of disturbance to the seabed? We heard very cogent, lucid evidence this morning from Dr 15 Edwards on that subject. Was that matter addressed by tangata whenua or by other iwi in respect of the dredging activity for the port?
MR McLAY: The dredging occurs in an industrial zone in a port, it's classified as 20 such in our regional coastal plan so it's seen as a very low value environment, just given the nature of it.
MR SHAW: No, I was asking there about the issues around the mauri that was talked about this morning in respect of picking up a piece of seabed 25 and removing it and putting it back. That's exactly, in the case of dredging, what is happening, you're putting it back somewhere else. So what I was interested in is whether or not those issues had been raised by iwi and by tangata whenua in respect of dredging.
30 MR McLAY: You might be stretching my memory but I do vaguely recall they were raised as part of a hearing process, yes.
MR SHAW: Okay. I don't know whether you were here when I was talking to Dr Edwards, but this question as to how you apply what he talked about 35 as two lenses simultaneously, or near simultaneously, to the same issue, the same problem. Here I'm looking for help, Mr McLay. If you were doing that, how did you manage to apply those two lenses, allowing for the stretch of memory and the issue of scale quite obviously? 40 MR McLAY: We involved tangata whenua in the monitoring, so there was a partnership approach.
MR SHAW: Right, and also the reporting of that monitoring was also in a 45 partnership approach, not just the activity?
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MR McLAY: Yes, and it was reported in a similar public report like the monitoring report here. In fact Tom McCulloch, who's sadly passed, and Wiki Keenan were involved in that, also sadly passed.
5 MS McGARRY: Was there consultation and engagement with tangata whenua prior to lodging the application?
MR McLAY: Heaps, yes.
10 MR SHAW: Did you have any structures in place? And I'm sorry to be pursuing this because it may seem tangential but it's not. Were there structures in place around that question, both of the pre-dredging consultation, was there anything formal established by way of a structure that established that partnership between TRC and local iwi? 15 MR McLAY: We encouraged that. I mean, there were two key issues, one was effect on kai moana and one was putting the sand back on the beaches. So we encouraged really open and extensive dialogue with the community on that and it was accepted and people worked 20 through in good faith, because the port had to dredge to stay open, otherwise the port was --
MR SHAW: No, look, I understand the imperative and that's fine. I'm talking here about the tools you used, that's the point of asking the question. I'm 25 not trying to compare the activities I'm trying to understand the tools you used.
MR McLAY: So heaps of consultation and even though there was a hearing I think there was a relationship going forward because of the involvement in 30 monitoring.
MR SHAW: All right, that's me on the section 44 and I think on the submission more broadly. I'm tempted to ask about the politics underlying the position that the Council took but I'm going to resist the temptation. 35 So I'll hand over to my colleagues because it would be a very unfair question to ask any official.
[11.35 am]
40 MR McLAY: Because my answer would be I couldn't comment because you'd have to ask the councillors.
MR SHAW: You couldn't possibly comment. You're a candidate for a television show, Mr McLay, with that response, but there we go. 45 MR McLAY: I know my place, Mr Chairman.
MR SHAW: All right, let's start with Ms McGarry.
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MS McGARRY: Thank you. I'd like to focus on your submission rather than the section 44. In paragraph 29 of your submission you said that TTR predicted changes in optical properties and photosynthesis over this 5 area where the median spatial footprint of the plume is predicted to occur. Then you go on to say that this information had not been included in the application. I've asked TTR if that information has been placed before us and I'm not sure I've got a clear answer on that at this point. Are you of the view that that information has come 10 forward yet?
MR McLAY: I understand that a Mr James presented some specific evidence around that.
15 MS McGARRY: In the hearing itself?
MR McLAY: Yes.
MS McGARRY: So you've been keeping up with the transcripts along the way? 20 MR McLAY: I have to admit that I have a staff member who has and before I came today I received a briefing from her, so that came from her that that matter had been considered in evidence by a Mr M James.
25 MS McGARRY: Thank you. Has your person been keeping on top of the comments that you've made in your submission in terms of the impacts on the macrophytobenthos and the concerns that you raise there in terms of the changes? Because obviously when going through the joint statements, you've referred there to knock-on effects, food effects, 30 and the potential, also in that same vein on microalgae, that they'll be greater than predicted if there's more reefs identified. Again, has your expert been watching the expert conferencing on that?
MR McLAY: Yes, and I don't know whether I can do hearsay stuff here, however, 35 she has noted that there has been expert conferencing around that, but her comment was in relation to the level of certainty around that.
MS McGARRY: Yes, and that all comes back to the documentation of the baseline and whether those, let's say, sensitive sites have been identified 40 adequately.
MR McLAY: Fundamentally, and I'd endorse the comments made by Ms Pratt that that's a key element here to determine where you start and what the impacts are. 45 MS McGARRY: And is that something, in your view, that needs to come before the cart? That's the horse? Because the applicant's position is there's enough certainty here for us to take the cart first and we'll do the
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baseline monitoring which will give us the measuring stick to then measure effects.
MR McLAY: I think that's for you to determine rather than me. That's your job. I 5 haven't sat through all the evidence and I'm a little --
MS McGARRY: I'm asking you in a general sense as an environmental manager of the region. What would you normally do? Would you normally be requiring baseline information in terms of defining the existing 10 environment up front?
MR McLAY: You probably would do that but again you've got some other tools that have been used here in terms of models, and it's not as if there's been no work done here in terms of studying the area and knowing 15 what's there. But the issue is how comprehensive it is, I guess that's the key.
MS McGARRY: Yes, so the key evidence here from experts that have said to us across the broader STB the effects are likely to be minor, but in terms of a 20 localised effect and in getting some definition on that term, it's probably somewhere between 2 - 3 kilometres around the activity itself, which would be the highest zone of effects. So the approach for us, and I'm asking you as a manager, would be to focus on defining what's within that zone of effects, that sort of highest zone of 25 influence.
MR McLAY: Yes, I think you'd need that to have integrity in what you're doing. But I also note it's not as if you're dealing with no data here, there is some data. 30 [11.40 am]
MS McGARRY: Yes. Just bear with me for a moment, I prefer to work with paper but people are trying to bring me into 2017 and it does cause time delays. 35 In paragraph 55 of your submission you've talked there about the ability to identify effects of the activity before they become unacceptable. There's two parts to that: obviously there's that time delay issue, which we're well aware of, but the other part of that brings up this question of being able to link cause and effect and how 40 complex that is. I know from my perspective I've grappled with this over the years and it's very difficult to distinguish with any level of proof that cause effect link. I just want, from your experience, some comment on how difficult a task that is in this kind of environment to distinguish the effects of a specific activity as opposed to natural 45 seasonality, climate change, all these other things that are going on?
MR McLAY: Very challenging, and I draw on our experience in monitoring intertidal reefs where natural changes occur all the time, in terms of
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natural sand movements along our coastline, that have more of an impact on the life that lives there than the discharges that the monitoring is associated with. So this is a highly challenging area.
5 MS McGARRY: You've talked in your submission about your current monitoring undertaken along the south Taranaki coast, including the rocky intertidal reefs, and I'm just wondering if you could give us any insight if there's any trends over time that are becoming apparent through that side of the environment monitoring? 10 MR McLAY: Just the point I made previously that the big driver is natural sand movement along our high energy coast.
MS McGARRY: Is there any evidence in terms of the state of the environment 15 monitoring to suggest that there is an ongoing degradation in terms of sediment or sedimentation?
MR McLAY: What happens is you end up with floods and big storms, sediment moves, the biota quite often dies but it soon rejuvenates. So I don't 20 think there's any long-term loss of habitat, it just goes up and down, and we've got lots of monitoring information around both south and north Taranaki to show that.
MS McGARRY: We heard from iwi yesterday about a particular event and the effect of 25 that on a reef, and then we asked some questions around the sort of frequency of those events and it was suggested that those events are becoming greater and more frequent as we're seeing the climate shift. Is that something the Council is seeing?
30 MR McLAY: No. But I add that we haven't really climbed into a lot of that data. I mean, climate change is a 100-year thing, it's not a 10-year thing or 20-year thing, it's a long-term phenomenon.
MS McGARRY: Just one final one and that's really in your submission, you've raised 35 there's no provision for you to recover reasonable costs of monitoring any cross-boundary effects. Is that something that you think can be addressed by way of a consent condition?
MR McLAY: If all parties agree, yes. The Augier Principle applies here. We are a 40 user pays Council in terms of resource users should pay their fair share of their consents and the monitoring of that for the community. No doubt the EPA is also very mindful of those drivers.
MS McGARRY: Thank you, Mr McLay. 45 [11.45 am]
MR SHAW: Mr Coates?
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MR COATES: Kia ora. In your paragraph 12 you talk about if consent is granted consideration should be given to conditions that give adequate recognition to the tangata whenua status of Ngāti Ruanui. How are 5 you considering that to be given effect to? Are you thinking the reference group that's proposed is sufficient?
MR McLAY: In our experience, and I noted the port dredging one, the more involvement of tangata whenua and other parties the better, so you've 10 got the reference group here. You also have the potential for parties to become involved in compliance monitoring. We have examples here where tangata whenua are involved in or have the opportunity to be involved in compliance monitoring, and in fact one of them is along this coast, that's at Hāwera there. 15 MR COATES: You only refer to Ngāti Ruanui but you were here yesterday when there were a number of different iwi submitting, Ngā Rauru and others, so would they be included under that comment?
20 MR McLAY: It comes down to mana whenua, who has mana whenua for an area, and given the predicted plume can go along the coast and involve more than one iwi then we'd be suggesting you involve those iwi that are impacted.
25 MR COATES: Your submission or your representation is neutral, and presumably that's because you're trying to balance out the regional economic benefits with the regional environmental disbenefits and, therefore, you're not pro or con?
30 MR McLAY: Indeed, and a lot of it hung off what the actual environmental effects were or were going to be, and I understand that you've heard evidence today and expert conferencing evidence around what they are.
MR COATES: Thank you. 35 MR SHAW: You wound up going where angels fear to tread, Mr McLay.
MR THOMPSON: Mr McLay, you've talked about the mobility of the sand along the coast and the sedimentation that results from that. Has the TRC 40 endeavoured to manage the impact of sedimentation from land based sources and river flooding and whatever comes with that?
MR McLAY: Yes, we've got a land management programme in our eastern hill country where a lot of the sediment comes, to encourage farmers to 45 plant poles, plant forests, fence areas off. But even in native bush catchments here and that sort of country you get natural build up in the riverbed and movement of sand or sediment to the coast. So it's one of those challenging issues.
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MR THOMPSON: So that's a long-term impact I guess but, nonetheless, we have the immediate situation where a large proportion of the sedimentation is from rivers. 5 MR McLAY: And redistribution of sediment that's on the seabed as well, you've heard evidence today about how shallow a lot of that area is and a lot of that sediment can be captured and moved around.
10 MR THOMPSON: In establishing background levels do you distinguish between that which has arrived naturally and that which is man induced?
MR McLAY: Well, I'd love to be able retire early with a really good answer to that question, but as you well know, that's a pretty challenging task to do 15 to differentiate those. If I had a way of doing that I'd be able to retire early.
MR THOMPSON: And you can't afford to, is that the --
20 MR McLAY: Correct.
MR THOMPSON: Okay, thanks.
MR SHAW: Mr McLay, I have a question here from Mr McCabe on behalf of 25 KASM. He asks: does the Taranaki Regional Council have a marine ecologist on staff?
MR McLAY: Yes, we do.
30 MR SHAW: If so, why has TRC chosen not to enable that expert to engage in the process via the provision of expert evidence and participating in expert conferencing?
MR McLAY: While we have a marine ecologist I think there are more eminently 35 qualified experts to participate in that process.
MR SHAW: Okay, thank you. Anything from you, Mr Holm?
MR HOLM: No, thank you, sir. 40 MR SHAW: Okay, Mr McLay, thank you very much.
MR McLAY: Thank you.
45 [11.50 am]
MR SHAW: Mr Duynhoven. Before we begin I think I should acknowledge to people present here today that I've known Mr Duynhoven for quite
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some time; more years than probably is reasonable to record, both as a colleague in local government, though in different jurisdictions, and also more broadly in the political spectrum. Welcome, Mr Duynhoven. I don't think our knowledge of each other in any way 5 compromises my ability to continue to serve on this Committee. Mr Duynhoven?
MR DUYNHOVEN: Hello. Mr Chairman, members of the Panel, mōrena, tēnā koutou katoa. For clarity, although I am a member of the New Plymouth 10 District Council and the Taranaki District Health Board, the views are my own that I express and have no connection or authority from either of those bodies. So I am here completely as an ordinary citizen of this district.
15 I was born, brought up, and lived in New Plymouth all my life so I've seen quite a lot of development and change and improvement over that 60 years. I began my working career as an electrician, then a technical teacher, and I've always been interested in technical matters, and in local environmental and social issues. I've been involved in 20 many issues including Clean Sea Action and the Taranaki Environment Action Group, which actually resulted in the election of a mayor who changed the seascape of this city for the better for a long time.
25 One activity I directly organised was the beach clean-up activities west of Paritutu for several years. This continued after I was elected to Parliament in 1987, and during that time I put in place legislation for the Sugar Loaf Islands Marine Park which is, as you know, offshore from New Plymouth. Regrettably I was only an MP for 30 three years but I was privileged to be re-elected as MP for New Plymouth in 1993 through to 2008. During the latter years of that time I was appointed by the Prime Minister as Associate Minister for Energy, with responsibility for all aspects of oil, gas, minerals, mining, exploration, etc. 35 The first time that the idea of seabed ironsand extraction was raised with me officials from the then Crown Minerals section of the Ministry of Economic Development briefed me on the technology of electromagnet surveying, completely non-invasive and with zero 40 actual effect on sea life. As the new Minister I could not believe the hysteria about those electromagnetic surveys, which were conducted entirely by air. I had hundreds of letters from school children telling me all the sea life would be killed, beaches would be gone, only rocks left, no fishing, no dolphins, whales or sharks, all because of 45 electromagnetic surveying. So dozens of these letters came from primary school children in the Kāwhia, Raglan and surrounding areas, where of course Māui's dolphin is a matter of some considerable
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interest. Naturally, in my response I tried to put that misinformation right.
Later the proposal was then presented to me by the company, TTR, 5 explaining how it would go about extraction of iron ore from the ironsands on the seabed should that prove viable, and they wanted to do sampling and testing based on those electromagnetic surveys. The company's CEO and technical officer and I went through the method of extraction and what actual effect on seafloor life any drifting 10 particulate matter might have. I was very aware of the large amount of sand moving up and down the coast, it happens every day of the year, and as I said earlier, in 1989 I was responsible for the Sugar Loaf Islands Marine Park legislation. As part of the huge amount of background work done by an army of volunteers and Taranaki 15 Regional Council, we were amazed to find that millions of tonnes of sand flowed into and out of the small area of the Sugar Loaf Islands Marine Park with the normal tidal flows of each year. Vastly more than is proposed to be extracted in this project.
20 [11.55 am]
Sand moves a lot in the normal course of the tidal and weather systems. Our family regularly stays in a bach in south Taranaki and on one occasion a sand hill some 20 metres or so high, maybe more, 25 which would have been thousands of tonnes of sand, just formed over a few weeks near the access road at Long Beach. Just as quickly it disappeared, entirely brought my nature, entirely brought by the wind, the tides, just formed this huge hill and then quietly went. That tells you the effects and the power that's out there. 30 The content of the seafloor in the areas proposed to have extraction is obviously going to be of real importance. After decades of fishing companies trawling around our coasts in New Zealand there must be a considerable knowledge of the fish feeding areas and that local 35 knowledge should be utilised. The issue of the so-called sand plume is really interesting because, as I said, of the huge amount of sand that drifts up and down our coast. Anyone who knows the south Taranaki beaches will observe every time they are there that things are changing, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. Long Beach, 40 for example, where I'm often at, changes quite dramatically sometimes in the sand cover, the colour, the composition obviously if the colour is changing, and the shape of the beach even changes. Those changes can be apparent even over a very few weeks. I regularly walk here and often still clean all the plastic debris that I can 45 find off the beach.
Now, some time ago when I was Minister when the maps I saw at that time, prior to the first application obviously, they showed the likely
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flow of particulate matter or sediment that would be liberated by the extraction process. It should be remembered that only those small areas of the highest ironsand content would be the ones that would be extracted. They're only a small proportion of the seafloor. Now, the 5 recorded tidal flows and effects show where that resulting sediment would be deposited and most of the silica would be deposited on the seafloor well away from close coastal areas. That was the information that I was given at the time and I've seen nothing that differs from that sense. The issue of seafloor life surveys is obviously 10 going to be important in those areas that would be affected around the extraction areas, and that might be a way forward. I accept that this is not a perfect science but I think my track record shows that I've always acted with caution in regard to the environment.
15 I've heard a number of interesting things just sitting here this morning. As far as I was aware, and unless there's a dramatic change, the extraction process involves vacuuming, for want of a better word, the sand from the sea floor, putting it through magnetic and probably centrifugal separators, and then returning the non-iron component, the 20 titanomagnetite is kept, the rest is returned to the sea floor under a hood. That's my understanding of the process as is proposed. I cannot imagine why you would need a bore mill which is used for crushing iron ore, because a bore mill is a completely different technology. My understanding is we're talking about sand here, not 25 blocks of rock. So I hope I'm correct in that.
When the issue of seismic surveying came up, as Minister, there was a concern and the concern was about the effect that it might have on whales, dolphins, and other sea life. So immediately I got officials 30 together, and explorers, and we discussed the issues and came up with a code of practice which has since been in place designed to protect wildlife, which ensures that work stops in seismic operations when dolphins and whales are sighted. As a little aside, one of the main problems we had with the seismic surveys was the sharks attacking 35 the towed array and presumably thinking it was food.
[12.00 pm]
So, to conclude, I realise I'm a rarity here today, I realise that very 40 few people, even though many I know do support a new industry coming, a new idea, with caution of course, but they've been reluctant to front up. Many for political reasons, because obviously there is a very strong opposition at one end of the spectrum, and perhaps a wider or certainly a number of members of the public who are saying, 45 "Well, let's look at the effects, see whether it's viable, and then go ahead if it is viable". That's the camp I'm in. If there are conditions that could be put in place which safeguard the environment, if we
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could provide a new industry and opportunities and work and income for our province, then let's look seriously at it.
Most of the arguments being over the environmental effects 5 obviously. It should be remembered that the biggest environmental effect on our whole province over the last 500 years or so, other than the eruption of the mountain about 250 years ago, our maunga was apparently last active then, was the clearing of native forest. You can still see the effects of that today, as Mr Thompson noted in his 10 questions to the last submitter. When you fly over the sea after a heavy rainfall event you can see all the sediment from the mouths of those rivers flowing right out to sea and I suspect that that does more to coat the inshore areas and reefs and so on than any naturally occurring sand drift, or indeed any potential sediment drift from this 15 proposed operation.
Finally, in my view we need to think back and take some lessons from history. People were afraid even of the effect on the human body of the speed of a steam locomotive at 30 miles per hour because 20 that was way faster than the fastest horse could go at long distance. Imagine what those people of less than 200 years ago would imagine of today's speeds of 2,000 kilometres per hour that are achievable and humans are subjected to. So while obviously this is a completely different science area, and I'm not scientist, we need to continue to 25 proceed but we must proceed with caution, and that's why I'm supporting this project with conditions to make it viable. Thank you, Mr Chairman, that will do for me. I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any.
30 MR SHAW: Thank you, Mr Duynhoven. Mr Thompson?
MR THOMPSON: None for me thanks.
MR SHAW: Ms McGarry? 35 MS McGARRY: No, thank you.
MR SHAW: And Mr Coates?
40 MR COATES: I'd just like to thank you for your submission as a very experienced person in this area, but I don't have any specific questions for you. Thank you.
MR DUYNHOVEN: Thank you, Mr Coates and Mr Shaw. 45 MR SHAW: Thank you, Mr Duynhoven. Sorry, any from other parties? Nothing, no, thank you.
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MR DUYNHOVEN: Thank you.
MR SHAW: And we'll just break for five minutes and we'll be back to see Ms Cheung, initially appearing on her own behalf. 5 ADJOURNMENT [12.03 pm]
RESUMED [12.06 pm]
10 MR SHAW: Ladies and gentlemen, I'll tell you what we're going to do. I've been told that lunch is just about upon us, but we'll hear Ms Cheung now appearing on her own behalf. We will then break for lunch and come back. If that works for you, Ms Cheung?
15 MS CHEUNG: That's fine.
MR SHAW: And hear you on behalf of Climate Justice Taranaki with your colleague, Dr DeVantier, okay?
20 MS CHEUNG: Yes, thank you, Chairman.
MR SHAW: Okay.
MS CHEUNG: Can people hear me? Just this is a little bit far away. Okay, well, 25 thank you for the opportunity for me to speak here. I’ll just do a little, very brief introduction. I've been an environmentalist all my life. I've worked for a wide range of environmental groups, government and intergovernmental agencies, to develop, manage and assess projects for biodiversity conservation, environmental protection and 30 sustainable development.
This proposed project by TTRL goes against what I know is right and all that I believe in. Seabed mining is an extractive industry that kills marine life, threatens marine ecosystems and disrupts the basis of 35 food chains on which our fisheries depend. Minerals like ironsand, rare earth and fossil fuels are not renewable resources, at least not in the timescale that humans operate on. Therefore, unlike fisheries, agriculture or tourism, mineral mining cannot possibly be managed sustainably. The government recognises this, but rather than prohibit 40 or strictly limit mining for the sake of sustainable resource management, it excludes minerals from the purpose of sustainable management in the RMA and the EEZ Act. So, next time you hear or read about mining companies working to sustainably manage natural resources, they don't have to under the New Zealand law and they 45 can't possibly do it anyway.
However, the EEZ Act, as does the RMA in its purpose require that the government and resource users safeguard the life supporting
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capacity of the environment and avoid, remedy or mitigate any adverse effects of activities on the environment.
Being a marine ecologist by training, I'm acutely aware of the trans- 5 boundary effects of human activities, especially in the coastal and marine environments. It is simply not possible to confine the negative impacts of mining within the boundary of the mine, with ocean currents and dynamic weather conditions, not to mention the species themselves which traverse across the depths and widths of the 10 ocean in coastal habitats, at different stages of their life cycles and at different times of the year. These effects are hugely complex and varied, from species to species.
[12.10 pm] 15 The impacts of noise underwater on marine mammals illustrates strongly the importance of considering trans-boundary effects in assessing proposed activities. According to expert evidence from Dr Leigh Torres, data indicate that the globally endangered blue whale 20 use the South Taranaki Bight regularly throughout the year and may even be part of a distinct New Zealand population. In her most recent survey, this year, a total of 9 sightings of 16 blue whales were recorded within 50 kilometres of the proposed mining site, the closest of which was sighted just 29 kilometres away. The nearest 25 hydrophone, located less than 19 kilometres from the mine site, detected blue whale calls almost daily. Dr Torres evidence states:
"Evaluation by TTR regarding noise impacts from mining operations on low-frequency marine mammals (baleen whales) is poor, 30 misleading and disregards the potential to disturb blue whale behaviour, distribution and physiology. Noise produced by the mining operations may directly disrupt blue whale foraging, cause blue whales to move out of important feeding areas, interfere with blue whale communication, causing loss of feeding or mating 35 opportunities and induce increased physiological stress that compromises blue whale health. All of these responses by baleen whales to elevated noise have been scientifically demonstrated elsewhere. It would be imprudent to allow such potential impacts on a newly documented, distinct New Zealand population of blue 40 whales."
Now, the applicant might argue that there's inadequate scientific evidence to show that the proposed mining operations in particular would cause significant harm to the blue whale population specific to 45 the South Taranaki Bight. However, the EEZ Act clearly states:
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"If, in relation to making a decision under this Act, the information available is uncertain or inadequate, the EPA must favour caution and environmental protection."
5 This is in line with principle 15 of the Rio Declaration:
"In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capacities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full 10 scientific evidence shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost- effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."
Expert evidence by Catherine Iorns and Dale Scott explained that the precautionary principle came about, I quote: 15 "In order to facilitate a wider paradigm shift away from a permissive and reactive approach for environmental regulation towards an approach that anticipates and acts in advance of harm".
20 The emergence of the precautionary principle followed the realisations that the ecological harm caused by human activities is often much graver and more pervasive than previously thought, difficult or impossible to undo and above all else, capable of being long term or irreversible in nature. Science has a very limited ability 25 to detect, predict, understand and ultimately prove the nature, gravity and probability of human impacts. Furthermore, we must shift away from an environmental management approach that focuses on determining acceptable levels of insult that receiving ecosystems or species can assimilate, given science's limited ability to accurately 30 determine and predict what harm receiving ecosystems can assimilate, especially harm generated by cumulative and synergistic effects.
The determination and requirement to assess and consider cumulative effects are clearly stated under the EEZ Act. Section 6(1)(d) 35 specifically includes in the meaning of effect, "any cumulative effect that arises over time or in combination with other effects". In my experience, the way that EPA assesses effects from a proposed activity in isolation, such as in the case of Shell Todd Oil Services Māui gas field or the OMV Maari oil field marine consent 40 applications and the present seabed mining application is flawed.
[12.15 pm]
None of the assessments has properly assessed the cumulative effects 45 of these activities on the environment, especially on threatened and endangered marine mammals. The reality is that these species are exposed to a multitude of impacts from everything that occurs in or around the areas they inhabit, not just the impacts from the proposed
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activity. Even though the effects from a single proposed activity may be minor, the addition of impacts from that activity to those from the suite of existing concurrent and envisaged activities on an endangered species such as the Māui's dolphin of New Zealand or the distinctive 5 South Taranaki Bight population of blue whales could be devastating. Extinction is irreversible.
The lack of awareness of cumulative effects among decision-makers is shown clearly when the Committee asked Dr Torres, why the noise 10 impacts from the sand mining proposal should be considered when seismic surveys produce noise many times louder? Here's a snippet of Dr Torres's answer to the question:
"Seismic surveys' noise is an impulsive noise. A loud bang every few 15 seconds, while the mining operation will produce non-impulsive continuous sound. Also, the mining operation will likely be continuous for 32 years. Therefore, these two sound sources are hard to compare. It's like comparing the impacts of listening to pile drilling for a month and listening to a vacuum cleaner for 32 years. 20 What's important here is to consider the cumulative effects of both these noise sources occurring at the same time; pile driving on top of vacuum cleaner."
Moreover, it's not just the noise impacts on marine mammals that are 25 of concern. The proposed mining site and surrounding areas are overlaid with numerous petroleum and mineral prospecting exploration and mining permits destined for seismic blasting, oil and gas drilling, minerals extraction and waste discharge and dumping. These include both current operating and proposed projects in the 30 EEZ and within the coastal marine area near shore.
So, here's just a map showing the mineral licences taken from the New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals website. Next one is the petroleum oil and gas permits in the South Taranaki Bight region. 35 You can see there's very little area left that is not already mined or open to mining, open to seismic surveys. Basically, pretty much all of our ocean is open to some sort of extraction and this is not including fisheries or shipping impacts.
40 This one is just overlaying the permits for the minerals and the permits for oil and gas and the red arrow's pointing at the little wedge where the proposed mining site is. You're all very familiar with that but I just wanted to show you that the species living in that area, whether they are whales or sponges that we've forgotten, or bryozoan 45 they are impacted by all sorts of activities, not just what's being proposed.
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Notably, Origin Energy's expert evidence from Owen Hobbs states that he's particularly concerned that the potential environmental damage that would follow from a TTR vessel colliding with the Kupe Platform. Actually, the proposed mining site is right on the edge of 5 the Kupe pipeline to the platform. Anyway, you can see the permits of the Kupe oil and gas zone and the TTR permits overlay each other. Origin's expert also said that:
"The DMC should note that the consequences of an uncontrolled 10 hydrocarbon release are potentially catastrophic."
It's absolutely critical the EPA and the Decision-making Committee respect and implement the EEZ Act properly by thoroughly examining the cumulative effects of all of these operations on marine 15 species and ecosystems, then make a decision on the application based on the precautionary principle. The EEZ Act section 87F(4) states that the DMC:
"May issue marine discharge consents, subject to conditions under 20 section 63, but not under section 63(2)(b)".
The EPA Conditions Report points out that this appears to preclude conditions that together amount or contribute to an adaptive management approach. 25 [12.20 pm]
Expert evidence from Catherine Iorns, Thomas Stewart and Dale Scott confirms that TTR's proposed conditions contribute to an 30 adaptive management approach, as defined in section 64(2)(b) of the EEZ Act and are, therefore, excluded under section 87F(4).
The limits against which the applicant proposes to assess their conduct are not known values but rather best guesses that have been 35 estimated on the basis of plume models and as yet unknown baseline data. Having reached the conclusion that TTR's proposed conditions amount to an adaptive management approach, we propose that the DMC decline the application for marine discharge consent in accordance with obligations under section 87F(4) and 61(2). This 40 additionally serves the purpose envisaged by the EEZ Amendment Act ensuring a strict approach is taken to marine discharges and dumping, as well as the overall purpose of the EEZ Act.
New Zealand has the international obligation to protect and enhance 45 the recovery of threatened species under the UN Convention of Biological Diversity. We simply cannot allow a flagship species like the Māui's dolphin to go extinct under our watch. It is time for the government to stop paying lip service to biodiversity, conservation
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and climate change - yes, climate change, we have to talk about it - and while, at the same time, dishing out more and more permits for destructive and exploitative industries, like mineral and petroleum mining. 5 I believe, with the knowledge and technologies that we have today, there's really no excuse for mining any more non-renewable resources, be it ironsand or oil and gas. There's also no excuse to be dumping or discharging waste into the ocean. We should be reducing 10 our consumption, using what we have and recycling what's otherwise thrown away and we need to encourage truly sustainable innovations that are kind to the earth and initiatives that build thriving and resilient communities.
15 Along with the thousands of concerned individuals and organisations that are opposed to the TTR application, I sincerely ask that the Decision-making Committee decline this application in full and advise the government to put in law a ban on all seabed mining activities in the EEZ and coastal marine areas of New Zealand. 20 Thank you.
MR SHAW: Thank you, Ms Cheung. Ms McGarry, any questions?
MS McGARRY: Yes. Well, thank you very much for making a very succinct and 25 articulate submission. Thank you for that. Cumulative effects; it's an interesting one, isn't it?
MS CHEUNG: It's a big one.
30 MS McGARRY: It is a big one and it's one that we've been pursuing with some vigour, I might add. We've certainly been pursuing any other discharges of sediment that have been happening into the general environment and we've sought information on that, in terms of sedimentation, and we've sought information in terms of noise and cumulative noise 35 impacts, particularly in terms of marine mammal effects. Are there any other areas that you'd like to draw our attention to in terms of cumulative impacts?
MS CHEUNG: I would like the Committee to look at the effects from all the existing 40 operations, as well as what's giving out and look at the threatened species especially that we have and that we know are on the verge of extinction. I don't see the need, even of much more effort to say no more to adding any more impacts on species that only we have, like the Māui's dolphin. And I think, previously, Ms Pratt has mentioned 45 that the information on noise, a lot of the information provided by the applicant are not adequate in any case so ...
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MS McGARRY: It's kind of related to cumulative impacts, but one of the things under the EEZ Act that we're required to do is to look at other existing activities. A lot of those are permitted activities as of right and one of those that we've focused quite a bit of attention on as well is the 5 adverse effects associated with commercial fishing and, particularly, with some fishing methods such as benthic trawling.
[12.25 pm]
10 It's been suggested to us that the effects of fishing activities far exceed any of the effects of this activity in terms of both benthic impacts and in terms on effects on marine mammals and potentially, even on the effects of seabirds. Your view on that, though, would be it's not a relative exercise, this is one of an impact on top of an 15 impact?
MS CHEUNG: Yes, my view is that this could be the last straw that breaks the camel's back and also a thin wedge in the case and once we have this first seabed mining proposal approved, then many more will come 20 and while I have read about pre-existing interests - not that I am a supporter of bottom-trawling, by no means - but they are there. Do we want to add a new untested technology that have impacts that we don't really know, but we know we will have impacts just we can't quite quantify it and if we don't and we can't assess this with certainty 25 then we have to take precaution? And, according to the Act, we can't even consider the adaptive management when we are looking at discharge consents applications.
MS McGARRY: Thank you. 30 MR SHAW: Mr Thompson?
MR THOMPSON: I have no questions, thank you.
35 MR SHAW: Mr Coates?
MR COATES: Yes, Ms Cheung, in your submission, you say:
"I believe, with the knowledge and technology we have today, there is 40 really no excuse for mining any more non-renewable resources, be it ironsand or oil and gas."
Is what you're really saying that there should be a blanket ban on mining? 45 MS CHEUNG: There should be, once their permits run out and also no technology that are known to cause irreversible harm to the environment and harm to people.
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MR COATES: So, you're not arguing for a complete ban on mining? You are not arguing that all mining should cease?
5 MS CHEUNG: It should cease. It should cease and definitely no new ones. No new coal mines and no new oil wells, no new fracking sites to get more gas out and no seabed mining. I'm sorry.
MR COATES: Thank you. 10 MS CHEUNG: Because there are better options and we've got to look after what we have. We have to look after our Māori. We heard very powerful representation this morning. Another thing that's cumulative, the local people here, they've taken enough. They've taken for decades, 15 generations of impacts. They've compromised a lot. I think there comes a point when we've got to say no.
MR COATES: Thank you.
20 MR SHAW: Thank you, Ms Cheung. Ms Cheung, I've been requested to hear Ms Nicola Patrick immediately after lunch, so would you mind if we call you after we've heard from her?
MS CHEUNG: Yes. 25 MR SHAW: Okay, fine. Thank you. So, when we come back from lunch we'll hear Ms Patrick and then go back to you and your colleague, Dr DeVantier. Okay, break now 45 minutes I think will be okay. Thank you. So, that's 1.15 pm. Thank you. 30 ADJOURNED [12.29 pm]
RESUMED [1.18 pm]
35 MR SHAW: I don't know if you're going to feel ignored by the empty audience seats, Ms Patrick, but I imagine you're here to talk to us, really, anyway.
MS PATRICK: Exactly. 40 MR SHAW: We apologise for the empty stools.
MS PATRICK: No, I'm not worried at all. How's that volume? Is that all right?
45 MR SHAW: Mine or yours?
MS PATRICK: Great. Well, I'm very loud, so I'll just get louder as we go along.
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MR SHAW: Welcome, Ms Patrick. You've been here for part of the day anyway, so you know the drill. Tell us what you wish to tell us and we'll ask you some questions if we have any.
5 MS PATRICK: Great. Thank you, thank you very much. So, my name is Nicola Patrick. I live in Whanganui and my mother's family comes from Taranaki and I've lived in Taranaki as well.
I'm here speaking as an individual, speaking only on my own right, 10 but I wanted to share my professional background to give some background to give some context to my comments. I have an environmental science degree and zoology degree from Massey University. I spent ten years at Department of Conservation, including years as an operational manager. I managed the 15 environment team at the Rottnest Island Authority in Western Australia dealing with environmental management but also development impact applications. I worked at AECOM, a global engineering consultancy for seven years, doing project management of environmental impact assessment for major development projects. 20 I'm a trustee on Sustainable Whanganui and I work part time for Te Kaahui o Rauru, and recently appointed as a Whanganui representative on Horizons Regional Council, so I've a got a really good, broad --
25 [1.20 pm]
MR SHAW: Sorry, which representative?
MS PATRICK: Horizons Regional Council. 30 MR SHAW: Yes, but a representative of whom?
MS PATRICK: As a councillor.
35 MR SHAW: As a councillor?
MS PATRICK: Yes, I'm an elected councillor for Whanganui. So, I've got a really good, broad background to consider the pressures that you find yourselves under, as the Decision-making Committee, in hearing this 40 whole range of views and dealing with the legislative framework.
So, I just wanted to highlight some key points that I've read through a variety of submissions and in the application as well. The first is that I'm unsure whether I would have considered this a complete 45 application. The key example is that the impacts of the activity drift into the Ngā Rauru Kītahi Rohe, the mana moana they have over the adjoining area and that really hasn't been addressed properly in the
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application. I don't consider that is adequate, really, given the impacts are identified to drift into their rohe.
I also question some of the good faith from the applicant in the 5 proposed conditions that they have identified. When it comes to working with tangata whenua, there is a proposed condition that identifies that should these previous conditions not be taken up within a set timeframe that they will be withdrawn and that's for the 35-year term of the consent. So, that's their proposal, is that, "We'll do all 10 these wonderful things with you, unless you're too slow off the mark and then we'll withdraw them". So, for me, I feel that that's an indication of not acting in good faith.
I'm also concerned about the lack of field testing and the lack of 15 comparable sites between this application and the research for similar activities around the world. It really is such a high-energy environment that the lack of field testing and in depth bottom floor analysis makes me concerned. The thing that really jumped out at me was looking at the way they upscaled the testing, from looking at the 20 disaggregation of the sediment in the testing, they moved to 21 centimetre buckets to upscale the operation. So, I just don't understand that, for a scale of a 35-year operation, that you wouldn't invest more in in situ testing.
25 I'm also concerned about looking at the existing sediment load. For example, there's reference made to the existing sediment coming out of the Whanganui River. Of course, that existing sediment load today is very different to what it was 50 or 100 years ago, or 150 years ago, and certainly the intent is the sediment load in those rivers decreases 30 over time which is why there's an awful lot of work going into keeping soil on the hills. So, I look at things like the comparison to the base level environment sediments and think that's a little bit of a distraction.
35 We've certainly had evidence already about the precautionary principle and you'll be well familiar with the Act and what emphasis it puts on the precautionary principle, so I won't labour it, except to say there are very clearly impacts from this operation and a range of impacts that are possible but it is the unknown and what could happen 40 that causes me concern, as well as the known.
From my experience as an operational manager, partly in marine environment, but more on land, I just can't imagine how adaptive management can work in practice in underwater environments where 45 it is using a new technology that hasn't been tested in this type of environment. I know how it works in practice. I've monitored development operations and I know there are lags between how things are reported and acted upon. I believe there are very real risks
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that it is impractical to make adaptive management work on this scale underwater.
I question the benefits that come from this and, again, not wanting to 5 lecture you on your own Act that you're set up to administer in this application, the inability to take into effect economic wellbeing as one of the balancing factors, unlike the RMA, so we can talk about economic benefits and we can question the extent to which they will apply to New Zealand and in particular South Taranaki and 10 Whanganui, but I also question the need for the resource.
[1.25 pm]
This is not us exploring the marine world to discover new cures for 15 cancer, this is not about medical research, this is about getting our beautiful black sand out using highly invasive, damaging, bottom floor digging up to 11 metres deep. It is a highly invasive operation.
So, my final comment. It's a challenge to you as the people who are 20 charged with making this decision, is what legacy do you want to leave for this environment? What value do we place on our underwater environment? Are we in a scenario of out of mind, out of sight? What level of certainty do we have before we permit this level of impact? 25 I feel really strongly that it is our job to leave the planet just a little bit better than we found it. There is no other planet. There is no planet B and this is our chance to make these decisions. So, I respectfully request that you decline this application and I wish you all the best 30 with your challenging roles. Kia ora.
MR SHAW: Kia ora. I'll tell you a legacy I want to leave and that's one of applying the law that we are required to apply. I think when we talk about these things sometimes that question is forgotten about. That 35 there has to be a measure of predictability in our lives, whether they are in terms of commercial applications or relationships between individuals or the criminal code and, so for me, and I think in the end, for all of us, whether we like it or lump it, our sentiments are of no great consequence. 40 What is of consequence is the robustness with which we apply the law and having heard what you had to say, Ms Patrick, it seems to me that the intention of the Act is clear about managing effects. So, in applying the law one would hope that there's going to be at worst a 45 coincidence between effects on the environment and that duty that we have under the law, because we've got the criteria we have to attend to.
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I couldn't resist a moment from the pulpit when you talked about legacies because I think that for me, is absolutely crucial.
MS PATRICK: Absolutely, and that's why I'm so grateful for the way the 5 precautionary principle is written into the EEZ Act, because it does set you a very strong challenge and the lack of the economic well- being coming forward in this criteria in the same way as it is in the RMA I think does push us in a direction of the legacy being confidence that the environment is protected as a priority. So, for me, 10 I am really grateful with what I've learnt about the Act.
MR SHAW: Thank you. I didn't know whether you were going to take the bait but it is, I think, a timely reminder and your response is good stuff too.
15 MS PATRICK: No, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and thank you. I sincerely wish you the best with what is a very hard job.
MR SHAW: Let's see whether my colleagues have any questions for you. Ms McGarry. 20 MS McGARRY: No questions, just thank you for your time and coming to speak to us today.
MR THOMPSON: None from me except just to make a comment about you referred to 25 the fact that the river sediment confuses the situation and we hope that in time that will become zero. Just to let you know that Dr Dearnaley, one of the expert witnesses, did make some comment about the contribution of the river sediment to the base condition relative to that from wave action. The numbers that he presented 30 were 12 million tonnes per annum coming from the rivers and contributing to that suspended sediments concentration versus 20 million tonnes from wave action. If there is no further passage down rivers there will still be a considerable amount of base condition anyway. 35 [1.30 pm]
MS PATRICK: Yes, I've looked at those graphs too, the graphs showing the sediment patterns and the sediment distribution from the plume so I can see that 40 the overlap and the emphasis and weight of them is relatively limited, but still saw on tables that there was comparison between, for example, the Whanganui River sediment mode. I just think we have to be careful about those levels of comparisons because you are not entirely comparing apples with apples. 45 MR THOMPSON: No, you're not, but I just wanted to put it into perspective for you, 12 versus 20.
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MS PATRICK: Yes.
MR THOMPSON: Thank you.
5 MR COATES: Good afternoon, Ms Patrick, tēnā koe. One of the things you said, and I can't remember the exact words but you were implying that mining ironsand is not an important mineral to be mined. Is that what you were saying?
10 MS PATRICK: I certainly stand by what has been described as underwater open cast mining as being an inappropriate way to access minerals when we need them. There are other ways of access minerals, including recycling and using different materials. So for me it absolutely is not a priority use of our seabed. 15 MR COATES: So if this was a rarer mineral it might be different?
MS PATRICK: Absolutely, and certainly if we were talking about invasive technology exploring our seabed, trying to find a medical cure, let's 20 have a conversation about that and let's have a conversation about the technique. What we are talking about is 50 million tonnes a year for 35 years over 65 square kilometres, this is not a small operation, this is highly significant and if we were talking about it on land, I think we would be laughed out of town. 65 square kilometres of digging 25 for 35 years? We just don't do things like that anymore.
MR COATES: Thank you.
MR SHAW: Well, that takes me to the question that I have for you because I 30 wanted to explore the issues that Mr Coates has raised with you. The Act makes no distinction between what we might think is important and what we might think is available elsewhere. In terms of minerals it is pretty clear and a mining licence, once granted, then falls to us to decide whether the effects on the environment can be managed to 35 such an extent. But extraction of that resource as efficiently as possible, and in that context efficient means quickly and completely. So no question of sustainability into the future? That is what the Act tells us we've got to do. So how do we meet our obligations there if we are satisfied that the effects on the environment can be managed? 40 MS PATRICK: Yes, so that's the key question and I think that's why you have got such a strong response from the community, is that the community, and me personally, have not been given surety that the impacts are acceptable in this environment and the level of unknown is really 45 high. It makes sense it is unknown. We are talking about underwater mining of seabeds over 65 square kilometres without having, in my view, really clear evidence of what is there because there hasn't been comprehensive surveying. There has been spot surveying done of the
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seabed.
MR SHAW: If you were satisfied that the effects were managed as described in the applicant's evidence, and I don't know how much of it you have read, 5 would your view be different if you were confident about the effects being as described in the application?
MS PATRICK: I would still personally have some hesitation because of the style of engagement with particularly Ngā Rauru Kiitahi. I feel really 10 uncomfortable about that from a respectful engagement is with the kaitiaki of the land so that would raise my red flags. In terms of my previous work life, I've certainly worked on facilitating approvals for projects that I was a bit iffy on but I was reassured because of the extent of work that was done by the applicant to ensure impacts of 15 threatened species, for example, was offset or managed with really thorough processes.
[1.35 pm]
20 So for me I don't see that level of thoroughness. I also feel incredibly uncomfortable --
MR SHAW: We're moving of the question because what I was saying was if they are as described in the application, would you say yes and you are 25 saying, no, you wouldn't because there are still these reserves --
MS PATRICK: Yes, I don't believe the description of the effects, the proposed effects I have confidence in because of the level of uncertainty around them and I've been in other environments, above land impact, where the 30 certainty can be much greater and you can say, "Okay, there is a risk but I can see how contained it is". In this environment I don't have this certainty because of the nature of the work.
MR SHAW: All right, you have taken us directly to the last point I want you to 35 address. I don't know if you've looked at any of the submissions in support?
MS PATRICK: Not the submissions, no.
40 MR SHAW: Well, there are some submissions in support and those submissions of course, as with those opposed, bear striking similarities one to the other because people struggle with some of the issues and so you do wind up with templates being used. Nothing wrong with that either. But there is a template submission in support which has been filled in 45 by a number of people, which tells us or asks us to compare the negative effects of a terrestrial mining operation when compared with this particular proposal. That, of course, relates to issues around toxicity and the inevitable effect on waterways and so forth that have
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got to be addressed. Have you got any view at all about that? Because what they are saying is that this represents a superior solution or answer to the need for the resource, without getting into a debate about whether or not the resource is necessary. Talk to me 5 about that.
MS PATRICK: Yes, so the nature of the material is relatively benign in the sense that it's not like gold mining where you are treating with arsenic in the old days and those sorts of chemicals to extract it. So I appreciate that 10 but I also appreciate that the style of extraction is literally the way it is described, it is digging 11 metres deep for 65 square kilometres. So I don't really understand how we can feel confident that that has constrained impacts without what you would have on land, which would be a thorough terrestrial survey of what is present. So if we 15 were talking about an extraction on land, we would have botanists out doing thorough field testing and certainly if it was home to threatened species it would be very thorough testing, and the addressing of how we managed those habitats and reinstated them would be described in a lot of detail. In this marine environment it is so much more 20 complex.
MR SHAW: Are you saying that the marine environment in that circumstance is inherently more difficult to gauge the existing environment, is that what you're saying? 25 MS PATRICK: I'm saying it is more difficult to gauge and the level of thoroughness has not been done to address that. So it's hard anyway, so you have to go further and then further again and I haven't seen that in this application. I have seen spot field testing and I've seen contrary 30 submissions that say there are other areas of a special nature in the site so I'm fearful that the technique across 65 square kilometres is it's all gone.
MR SHAW: Okay, look, thank you very much. Thank you for engaging with us as 35 you have. I have no more questions for you.
MS PATRICK: Thank you, I've really appreciated it. Kia ora, thank you.
MR SHAW: Kia ora. 40 MR SHAW: Ms Cheung and Dr DeVantier now, if we could.
DR DEVANTIER: Good afternoon, Chair, DMC, thank you very much for taking the time to listen to our submission. I'll get straight into it, shall I? 45 MR SHAW: Please do.
DR DEVANTIER: Climate Justice Taranaki is an incorporated society focused on
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climate change, it's root causes and impacts, and the social injustice associated with it. Our core members have backgrounds in environmental science, marine biology and ecology, including threatened species and journalism. 5 [1.40 pm]
CJT request that the application from TTRL be declined. Our reasons were explained in detail in our written submission; here we focus on 10 several key issues. As a nation and despite our privileged first world status we routinely favour short-term economic imperatives over long-term ecological sustainability. In so doing, in our view, we are failing to meet our obligations under international conventions such as the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity or indeed 15 to future generations who will inherit a country and, indeed, world much depleted of its natural wonders. At this late stage, now in the midst of the Anthropocene mass extinction, we must be prepared to act decisively to protect our growing list of threatened species and the ecosystems on which they and ultimately we depend. 20 It is now well established that the South Taranaki Bight and the broader area of the TTRL proposal is home, feeding ground or migration corridor for numerous species of cetaceans or whales and dolphins, slide 1. These include Hector's dolphin with the critically 25 endangered subspecies Māui's dolphin, pygmy blue whale, southern white whales during the winter calving season and killer whales.
Based on Dr Childerhouse's mapping, and I just refer you to the slide here or here, the South Taranaki Bight hosts a highly diverse 30 assembly of cetaceans. We were frankly astonished by the list, which includes 38 species. We were sufficiently impressed that we sought to put this number into the global perspective, slide 2. In fact, according to Cashner et al's (2011) global analysis our region has the most diverse assemblage of cetacean species on earth, along with an 35 area off Samborombón Bay in Uruguay. There are approximately 88 species globally, our area probably has around 40, 38 have been documented.
It is sobering to consider what our region cetacean fauna must have 40 been like prior to the commercial whaling era or indeed the much more recent expansion of fossil fuel mining and industrial fisheries. Today, of course, much of this area is subject to intense industrial activity as well illustrated by Professor Liz Slooten. Slide 3, please. So you can see what's going on out there. A heck of a lot. 45 The obvious questions arise: is this level of industrial activity appropriate in the midst of one of the most diverse cetacean assemblages on our planet, particularly given our international
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commitments to protect these species? Should we be permitting yet more industrial activity in the area? For Māui's dolphin, the International Whaling Commission's Subcommittee on small cetaceans emphasised that the critically endangered status and the 5 inherent and irresolvable uncertainty surrounding information on small populations require the implementation of precautionary measures. The committee called for full protection of Māui's dolphin in all areas throughout their habitat together with an ample buffer zone comprising the area from Maunganui Bluff to Whanganui 10 offshore to 20 nautical miles and including harbours. Such protection, were it to be afforded, would be consistent with New Zealand's international obligations under the UNCBD, article 8(2)(d) promote the protection of ecosystems, natural habitats and the maintenance of viable populations of species in natural surroundings, 15 and crucially (f) promote the recovery of threatened species. We have signed this convention, we should be honouring it.
It would also, if we were to do this, prohibit this present proposal. As Torres et al (2015) noted, the Māui's dolphin population is distributed 20 along the western coast of the North Island, potentially including the TTR proposed project area, and has a population estimate of just 55 individuals greater than one year old. Two recent Hector's or Māui's dolphin deaths have been recorded in the South Taranaki Bight, an individual was incidentally caught in a gillnet off Mount Egmont and 25 a beach cast individual was discovered at Opunake.
[1.45 pm]
Although none were sighted during aerial surveys for TTRL, an 30 unsurprising result given their rarity and critically endangered status, Hector's and Māui's dolphins have been recorded in close vicinity of the proposal. Slide 4, please. So I have noted there arrows that point to sightings of Māui's or Hector's dolphins and obviously the blue whales which we now know are incredibly prevalent in the general 35 area.
The general area provides an important corridor for movement of dolphins and other cetaceans along the southwest part of the North Island, as least prior to population declines. The report by Torres et al 40 concluded that areas of increased habitat suitability for Hector's dolphins and southern white whales lie close in shore and may be increasingly used. This is close in shore to the proposed mining operation.
45 While this report did not examine the situation of blue whales in the area, Torres revealed that the South Taranaki Bight is one of very few known foraging grounds for this globally endangered species and identified the need for a greater understanding of their habitat use
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patterns to effectively manage activities such as shipping and mining. Torres also advised that despite apparent low level impacts from individual sources, we must be cognisant of cumulative effects and manage these threats with a co-ordinated approach. 5 As the DMC is no doubt aware, Dr Torres has recently reported a much larger population of pygmy blue whales in the South Taranaki Bight than previously estimated, significantly enhancing the area's global importance for threatened cetaceans. 10 Cumulative effects. As is clear from the mortality statistics and published science these cetaceans are at significant risk from fishing pressure, vessel strike, noise from mining, maritime traffic and seismic surveys for petroleum, marine pollution, habitat loss, changes 15 in the availability of food sources and declining breeding success due to dwindling populations. Internationally renowned cetacean specialist, Professor Liz Slooten, has repeatedly warned in several submissions under the EEZCS Act and elsewhere of the dangers posed to threatened cetaceans in the general area of this proposal from 20 expanding industrial activity as was well illustrated in her cumulative impacts graphic that I showed earlier.
It is unequivocal that this proposal, if permitted, will add to these stresses and impacts. What is equivocal is the level of additional 25 impact. Will it be negligible as some TTRL consultant reports claim? Will it be less than minor? The confoundingly ambiguous RMA standard. Can it be assessed independently of the other industrial activities that already occur in the vicinity as appears to be the approach taken by TTRL and their consultants? Are there likely to be 30 cumulative effects, potential synergisms of impact from all these various activities such as underwater noise? These are all important questions.
So what are the cumulative risks? Drawing lines on the sea. On 35 paper the proposed TTR mining area borders the safety zone of the existing Kupe gas platform. The safety zone stands merely 500 metres from each point on the outer edge of the well head's platform. For comparison, TTRL's integrated mining vessel would be 345 metres long. An analysis for TTRL by MetOcean did not consider the 40 risk, extent and impact of oil spill, explosion or gas release resulting from the potential collision of any of the six vessels or crawlers with the origin Kupe gas platform, pipeline and associated vessels. It is just such unforeseen events with low likelihood yet high impact that should be assessed as the benefit of hindsight has unfortunately 45 demonstrated for the disastrous Deepwater Horizon incident.
Of course, other companies also operate or plan to operate in the South Taranaki Bight, conducting seismic surveys, drilling,
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maintenance, transport and supply functions for the petroleum industry, also fishing, all generating underwater noise and other forms of pollution. As Ms Cheung earlier explained, there are no tightly defined boundaries in the sea for birds, fish and mammals to obey. 5 Ocean currents flow across such invisible lines supporting fauna and flora and also carrying whatever has been dumped accidentally or deliberately into them. Spills, plumes and a lot of noise.
[1.50 pm] 10 For cetaceans, underwater noise, the frequency and intensity plays a crucial role in their biology and can cause significant damage. For example, Slooten 2014 noted:
15 "The effects of noise on marine mammals include physiologically induced and behaviourally induced impacts. Physiological effects of noise include direct damage to organs and tissues, permanent or temporary hearing threshold shifts and stress. Behavioural impacts include the increased possibility of strandings and other behavioural 20 issues."
So how much noise has already been introduced to the area through industrial activities? Quite a lot it seems. Slide 5. Most of which is in the critical range for cetaceans. Dr Childerhouse has drawn us a 25 very nice graphic here and you can see that the noise that is being generated already out there is directly in the hearing range of the animals that we are most concerned about.
What are the cumulative effects? Is it wise to introduce yet more near 30 constant noise to this amblyogenic cacophony? Not according to Dr Leigh Torres whose comments were quoted by Ms Cheung just now. Well, actually before lunch. What about the spills and plumes? Between October 2011 and August 2015, 66 spill related incidents were recorded from Taranaki's offshore oil facilities. Fortunately, all 35 small-scale events. Yet, for comparison, the oil spill from the Rena grounding on Astrolabe Reef in October 2011 cost some $130 million of which the New Zealand Government paid $46.9 million. These figures do not include any economic losses in terms of tourism and fisheries, nor the largely unknown impacts on marine life other than 40 the oil soaked birds.
The TTRL plume monitoring report by Hadfield and McDonald stated that there will be a rather mobile plume that clearly responses to wind driven fluctuations in the currents. In its common 45 configuration, the plume extends east-southeast from the source location. This plume is directly over some sensitive and potentially sensitive habitats and across the known range of Māui's dolphin and other cetaceans. TTRL argue that the amount of sediment in the
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plume is insignificant compared with the background suspended sediment concentrations in the area. However, water clarity there presently fluctuates with weather and sea conditions, with period of high turbidity interspersed among times of high water clarity. 5 Presumably the TTRL generated plume will be an additional near constant load on this system, particularly during periods of calm weather.
Furthermore, it is not known, at least to CJT, whether the plume may 10 contain toxins either from within the seabed or as part of the mining process. Without knowing what's in the plume it is impossible to assess the extent of impacts on the marine environment, yet the marine biodiversity report by MacDiarmid et al (2015) concluded that there should be only negligible effects from the proposed mining and 15 in respect of marine mammals she said:
"Consequently, they are likely to be displaced from or experience a decrease in prey abundance or availability over a very small part of their distribution." 20 This way of assessing the effects of an activity in isolation is, in our view, seriously flawed. Just where are these species going to be displaced to when the larger area is increasingly being carved up for mineral and petroleum exploration and mining, along with the 25 existing fisheries and other marine traffic? Professor Slooten made this point clearly in her executive summary of 31 March 2014.
"Displacement of marine mammals from the affected area, whether due to habitat damage, noise or the sedimentation plume, may result 30 in displacement from important feeding areas and/or may increase the displaced animal's exposure to threats such as predators or entanglement in fishing gear. This is particular critical for endangered and critically endangered species."
35 Traffic cascades. Impacts including increased sedimentation and potential toxicity that affect primary producers can cascade through food webs, usually with unforeseen consequence on higher trophic levels. Such trophic cascades have driven extinctions, well documented in the science literature, and should be considered in 40 association with cumulative effects. As Professor Slooten noted, the experts agreed that any impacts, including from heavy metals, on other organisms including fish, benthic species and plankton have the potential to have flow on effects through the ecosystem, including for marine mammals which are at the top of the food chain. 45 [1.55 pm]
Given all of the above, CJT submit that a cautionary approach to
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threatened cetaceans from cumulative effects should cause this proposal to be declined. We consider that parts of section 6, 28, 33, 39 and 59 of the EEZCS Act provide clarity in respect of cumulative effects and are therefore crucial to your deliberations. 5 In our view, the impact assessment provided by TTRL has failed to address cumulative effects in a comprehensive or adequate manner. As the Act, section 34, clearly states:
10 "Where inadequate information produces uncertainty a cautionary approach favouring environmental protection is warranted."
Conversely, we are particularly concerned that if a marine consent were to be granted, relying on some form of adaptive management 15 approach, New Zealand's ability to deliver its international obligations, notably the recovery of threatened species as per article 8 of the UN CBD, would be further compromised. We have a globally important cetacean hotspot right on our doorstep, including rare and highly threatened species, surely it is time to protect it. Opportunities 20 from such protection are significant as demonstrated at Kaikoura, Tonga, Hawaii and other hotspots.
The risk of precedents. Finally, the current application represents the thin edge of the wedge amidst 65.76 kilometres of proposed mining 25 area amidst an almost ten-fold 635 kilometres squared of exploratory permit area and an even larger, 815 kilometres squared, of continental shelf licence area for prospecting, all owned by TTRL. At least when we looked at this, these things change rapidly. People sell and buy things all the time. 30 If this proposal were permitted there is significant risk of major future expansion of the proposed mining area with associated impacts. Furthermore, almost the entire South Taranaki coast, spanning over 402 square kilometres, is a mineral prospecting permit owned by Pan 35 New Zealand Resources. Offshore from New Plymouth in the North Taranaki Bight Ironsands Offshore Mining Limited is awaiting approval of its exploration permit covering over 223 square kilometres. Together these permits enable the search for dozens of metal and non-metals from aluminium - I won't go through the whole 40 thing - just to say it truly is a miner's wet dream, but at what cost to our marine species? If this application is approved it could open the floodgate to decades of seabed and coastal mining resulting in irreversible environmental damage.
45 We therefore ask the DMC as part of your findings to recommend to central government that seabed mining become a prohibited activity under the Act. Such a recommendation, if legislated, would eliminate this costly and time-consuming assessment process for future would-
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be proponents, government agencies, the public and other interested parties. Thank you.
MR SHAW: Thank you. Ms McGarry, questions? 5 MS McGARRY: I have just thought of one really and that's more about your organisation than anything you've said, I think. Thank you for your submission, it's been very clear. How many members are signed up to Climate Justice Taranaki? 10 DR DEVANTIER: I think we have, is it 14 or 15 or something?
MS CHEUNG: We have over a thousand people on our mailing list, they are not necessarily all members but we have 18 on our incorporated 15 documentation that I signed.
MS McGARRY: In your Taranaki base? You are not a New Zealand wide group?
DR DEVANTIER: I wish we were. 20 MS McGARRY: And then you've got over 1,000 people on your mail out list? Thank you.
MR COATES: Tēnā kotou. Just explain to me why you call it Climate Justice? 25 DR DEVANTIER: Well, the name has international application. There is a Climate Justice movement globally and we're, in a sense, the local branch if you like of a global movement that is working to curb the folly of our times. The great folly of our times. 30 MR COATES: So you are not only concerned with climate change?
DR DEVANTIER: Absolutely not. We're concerned about the human footprint which is far too strong on our planet if we intend to leave anything for future 35 generations.
MR COATES: And just a bit more specific, you talked at one stage about whether the plume may contain toxins either from within the seabed or introduced as part of the mining process. What do you mean by 40 "from within the seabed"?
[2.00 pm]
DR DEVANTIER: Well, in many cases where the surface sediments are disturbed there 45 are actually components that can be toxic. For instance, the acid sulphates that accumulate. I am not sure, honestly we put that in as a question because we do not know what's down there. We haven't had a chance to go through all of the documents in detail, it's far too much
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for us, but I am just concerned that when you start digging down 11 or 12 metres into the seabed that there may be toxins in there that will drift in the plume or drift outside the plume that are not accounted for in the current assessment. 5 MR COATES: So you are not talking just about metals like mercury and nickel?
DR DEVANTIER: No, no, not just about metals, no.
10 MR COATES: Thank you.
MS CHEUNG: I guess it is partly from the research that we have done on the oil and gas drilling and fracking. A lot of the toxicity, in addition to the chemicals that the company used to frack the wells to get more oil 15 and gas out is also what comes out from the deep formations in the ground, whether they are heavy metal, radioactive elements and other things that are okay when they are undisturbed in the ground. We don't know what exactly is in the seabed, we don't really have the expertise but it seems like that hasn't been looked at or we are not 20 able to identify anything that should be looked at.
MR COATES: Thank you for that.
MR THOMPSON: No questions, thanks. 25 MR SHAW: Okay, thank you.
DR DEVANTIER: Thank you.
30 MR SHAW: Bruce Boyd. Sorry, Mr Roger Malthus, I am sorry. It must be the name brings on a sense of foreboding giving some of the issues we are discussing, Mr Malthus.
MR MALTHUS: I don't know about foreboding but his is much more colourful than 35 mine. I didn't mind him going first at all. However, I won't be so long.
Just for clarity, you have a copy of my submission?
40 MR SHAW: We do, of your original submission, yes, we do.
MR MALTHUS: There were appendices, a graph.
MR SHAW: And the answer is yes. 45 MR MALTHUS: Good, okay.
MR SHAW: We have a lengthy commentary that follows the form submission,
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your personal fishing records and some further information around blue cod. Okay.
MR MALTHUS: Good. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to present on 5 something that I know was being dealt with in very scientific terms in the time that I have been listening to submissions so far but I am now going to probably put a different slant on things. I am a recreational fisherman, first and foremost. If I could be foremost I wouldn't do the work that I do but I run a little business in South Taranaki valuing 10 property.
I have been resident down there since 1980. I have been probably 20 years in Taranaki. Sorry, I have been resident down there for the last ten years. I arrived in Taranaki at the start of the Think Big projects 15 and lived initially in North Taranaki for most of that period.
I am pretty passionate about recreational fishing and certainly very passionate about maintaining the fishery for future generations and for my retirement and relaxation. I am a keen boat fisherman, have 20 been boat fishing for probably 40 years, maybe a little bit longer. I am also still diving, been an enthusiastic recreational driver for the last 35 years or so.
[2.05 pm] 25 I run my own boat and I enjoy taking out tourists who don't have the experience, have come to Taranaki and we can add something to it, giving them something they may not see if the live in the middle of Europe. 30 Our fishery. I'm concerned about the application and I haven't read all the material, I have been supplied with bits and pieces that may be relevant but in saying that I am equally concerned having arrived in Taranaki in 1980 about the amount of non-recoverable resources that 35 have come out of the Taranaki province to fund many things in Wellington. The cheques are usually paid there for those resources. Of course, there is a challenge to get the benefits back to Taranaki, not only for my generation but for generations to come because the non-recoverable resources are the vital ones for our future generations 40 because we can only mine things like ironsands and oil, petrochemicals once. They are not like dairy produce or forestry which are recoverable resources and which Taranaki has provided more than its share of those as well.
45 So when I see something that is going to be taken out that can't be recovered, I want to see some benefits to us and I'm struggling a little on this application to see that happen. I am also pretty concerned about the robust field research. I haven't read all the scientific
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material but to me - and I am sure you will see in submissions to come - to actually get on the bottom of the seabed and have a look at what's there is quite enlightening compared with what you think you can see from the surface or from some scientific model. There are so 5 many things that can't be seen by equipment from the surface, you need to get down there and have a look at actually what's there and how it works.
I enjoy fishing over the South Taranaki Bight. I am a member of 10 three different fishing clubs, I end up being in those mainly because I do some insurance valuations for their premises, but in saying that it gives me an interest in most of the Taranaki region fishing-wise.
The species in this fishery that are going to be vulnerable to the 15 effects of ironsands mining vary considerably. We have just heard a submission about whales and dolphins and things like that and I don't have very much experience in that but I am more than aware that fish like snapper come in seasonally, they are pelagic fish, they come and they go, they are season and their numbers have been reasonably 20 consistent, if not improving.
The other species that being a keen diver I like to supply home and family is I catch a few crayfish. Now, these species are very much transient. They come and go, they move in in a drove, usually in 25 November, various breeding cycles and as we get towards Christmas and New Year they move up the reefs and split up. So they are not as vulnerable as the species that most fisherman in South Taranaki really get a lot of pleasure out of catching these blue cod. These little chaps are highly vulnerable because they're territorial. I think if you read 30 the bit of the research document, admittedly it was a South Island piece, but their blue cod are probably not a lot different to ours, same species, they take quite a long time to get to maturity, about eight years, compared to the snapper. That's very long. They're also, when I say they're territorial, the research suggests that some of them do go 35 further afield a few kilometres, but the majority of them stay close to a kilometre from where they were first born. In other words, this is the area they feed and grow in, and eventually breed in.
So, in South Taranaki, go to the ramp after a day's fishing and the first 40 call is, "How many blue cod did you catch?" or "Did you get your limit?" I hope they didn't all get their limit, but reality is that people really want to know how many of the really nice eating species you caught.
45 [2.10 pm]
My science is pretty basic. I've kept a diary for a bit over ten years now, and I only record three things really, who's on board, what the
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weather was like, and what we caught. So, to actually get out of my diary something that's reasonably useful to me, as well as hopefully you as Commissioners, is to just take one day out of February, usually probably as good a time to go fishing in South Taranaki to catch blue 5 cod as any, and see how many we caught. And if you refer to that graph, you'd be quite staggered as to how the decline in our catch rate has been graphed. And, yes, it's quite scary about the drop-off in blue cod catch. And what I'm really saying here is that my crude form of science shows me that this fishery is highly vulnerable to being tipped 10 over.
When I came here in 2008 I wasn't probably the most popular person in the fishing club at Pātea because I suggested that 20 blue cod per person was a ridiculously high catch and that we should reduce it to 15 10. Talk about being a pork chop in a synagogue. But in saying that, it only was probably two years later that, as I suggested at the time, if you don't change it voluntarily, you'll probably find it'll be changed for you, which it did end up being changed, so we're reduced down to ten now, and if you look at that graph, I suggest to you that the days 20 of catching ten blue cod per person are numbered, and so they should be if we're going to knock this species out of our fishery.
So, why's it going down like that? Yes, the boats are getting bigger. Yes, more of our population are retiring, and they've got more time to 25 do the fishery. The size of the boat is important in Pātea because it means you can fish more days. It's a pretty nasty bar we have there, and the technology that allows us to judge when we can go fishing is available to us all, so we can watch closely an anticyclone come in and say, "Yes, let's see what swell map says as to the size of the 30 waves on the bar", and that tells us how safely and how often we can get out.
So, the number of boats are getting bigger, the age of the fishermen is getting greater, but there's more fishing days. The other thing that's 35 happening, which was really noticeable this year, is the number of tourists that are coming to Taranaki, not so much retirees, but a lot of young people. Goodness gracious, you can blame social media for that. I don't blame them in a negative sense, but it is great to see them here and it's great to give them the experience. So, tourism in 40 Taranaki, particularly for young people, is going to be an ever- increasing and significant supporter of our economy. And also, in the same breath, we have more commercial fishing. More commercial fishing? Not so much local commercial fishermen fishing the South Taranaki Bight, but those in, I think it's area eight, so for example we 45 have boats coming from New Plymouth, Nelson, and I think as far south as the Wairarapa fishing crayfish off Opunake this year. They had 24 tonnes of quota, and you can imagine what that does to a fishery. When they leave, they've got their 24 tonne.
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So, the point I'm making is that these larger boats can travel further and there's a lot more commercial fishing pressure and that also comes back to our little fellow, the cod again, because we have 5 commercial cod potting. In other words, we lay a grid of pots, bait them up, get the cod to go into them and that hammers our fishery as well.
So, therefore, you can see that we've got a fishery that's pretty 10 vulnerable to collapsing if we don't look after it, and when I start reading material, or having material emailed through to me that tells me about plumes and digging up pieces of seabed, I'm understandably alarmed, particularly where I see some of the models on the plumes going down across the area of which I fish and dive in. Once you 15 start putting 20 per cent reduction in visibility, your divers are not happy about that, and you can basically forget about your tourism divers. I've been fortunate enough to dive in many places throughout the world, and the traps out there rates right up with the best of them. In clear visibility, it's a marvellous diving experience, putting aside 20 the crayfish that are available there.
But in saying that, this is a lot of opportunity to develop tourism on an environmental sense because these traps in the outer reefs around those areas will make wonderful tourist opportunities, and I guess 25 whether my diving/fishing colleagues like it or not, there will be a likelihood of a marine reserve there given that it's worth reserving, and that comes to my next concern.
[2.15 pm] 30 We've got a plume coming across our large area from the exploration if it proceeds, or the mining if it proceeds. The next thing concerns me, not only the drop of visibility, but if this application is approved for a 25 or 30-year period, plumes around the edge I can assume 35 when they get lighter in colour, suggest there's less off it, so it hasn't disappeared, it's dropped out, it's started to settle down. When you start building that up and building that up, how deep's that going to be on the bottom? I don't know. How widespread is it? Okay, we know the crayfish probably all shift because they can. The pelagic fish will 40 go elsewhere, so we're starting to change the ecology or the fishing environment, but I'm not sure what's going to happen to the blue cod that don't normally go more than a kilometre from where they've been born, bred and fished.
45 So, I have a real concern about this plume. I don't know what it's going to do as far as the blue cod are concerned, and I don't know how much or how dense it's going to be over a projected long period of a successful mining application.
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I'm just starting to get close to wrapping up here. Benefits to South Taranaki. Come back to what we were talking about the bills being paid in Wellington, and we've given a lot of non-recoverable 5 resources out of Taranaki. What will really be the benefits for people in the South Taranaki district? We feel a bit envious of what goes on in North Taranaki because a lot of people come down to South Taranaki to get jobs here and then they take their pay packets home and spend it there. So, we feel very passionate about keeping the 10 resources that are generated here in South Taranaki.
Employment? I haven't heard too much clarity about how many people will be employed from the South Taranaki district. I have some experience of exploration and mining industries with a son in 15 the petrochemical industry drilling offshore in Australia. Now, if the Australian example is anything to go by, most people getting jobs on this type of mining are going to be ticketed and well-qualified, and they are a transient group of people, my son included, and they tend to travel around the world looking for these high paid jobs, high risk 20 jobs, but to guarantee me that there'll be a significant proportion of people operating this vessel and its associated infrastructure, I've yet to be convinced.
So, that's really where we want to see the money spent in South 25 Taranaki if we do have to accept that this application is going to succeed.
And, just rolling on, I've just said tolerating the wrong decision. Fishing, well, the blue cod and the plume, I've covered off on that. 30 I'm concerned that there doesn't seem to be enough on the bottom field tests. I'd be happy to see a miniature version of this vessel go do its thing in another place which is not ecologically so vulnerable as I believe this one is, and do that for a couple of years and let's have a real close look at the results and see where we go from there. 35 When it comes to the actual vessel and the mining, I don't know what's been planned for observers, but I assume if it's good for the fishing industry for commercial fishing, it's good for a vessel like this, 24/7 independent observers. You've got the observer material, but I'd 40 like to see the Taranaki Regional Council be responsible for managing the consent. They've done a pretty good job as a watchdog in our province, seem to be independent, seem to be quite enthusiastic about looking after our resources, and it would be important for the locals to have confidence in the people that are monitoring it to be 45 local, i.e. the Taranaki Regional Council.
As a valuer, I do a lot of rental reviews, and many of those in relation to land we get real problems when leases go for 20, 21 years is the
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classic Glasgow type lease. The main reason for that is that things change, or have changed in my career of 45 plus years, and consequently a 21-year term is too big, and most modern-day leases are now 7-year terms. 5 [2.20 pm]
To approve an application for 25 - 35 years is staggering. I went to a movie the other night that talked about the world being finished by 10 2050 so, yes, these guys are still shovelling.
So, reality is that 25 - 35 years is miles too long an application period. Really, we should be looking at seven years maximum and both parties being responsible for a renewal and looking how they have 15 managed so far, what they've done for our community, how both parties have succeeded and how they've looked after our environment.
Just as an aside, if they really want to do this, how about servicing your vessel out of Pātea? How about jolly well up and demolishing 20 and replacing the existing wharf and putting a chandlery business in there, and how about getting the Pāteabar up to a good standard with more work on the abutments. So, there's some practical solutions.
I refer you back. I can produce my diaries in detail if you're 25 concerned the graph doesn't give enough information, but I would like them back, and I'd refer you to the book, The Plundered Planet. It was an interesting read for a Taranaki valuer, just to see what is going on and the fear we have that we're not looking after our resources for our future generations. 30 Thanks for your patience.
MR SHAW: Thank you. Neatly timed. I'll just see whether my colleagues have any questions. Unfortunately, your neat timing took you to the ten 35 minutes plus the five, but there we go.
MR MALTHUS: That's all right.
MR SHAW: Mr Thompson? 40 MR THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr Malthus, for a very interesting presentation. One thing that I've been trying to get a handle on is a really good picture of what the features are out there that support that fish population so, while your fishing catch is interesting to me, and it's also interesting 45 with respect to the decline and the take, and you've raised a number of reasons why that's been the case, I think most of those have been fishing pressure rather than any environmental impact. But I wonder if you're able to with your experience now over quite a period of time,
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to identify the features that are important and that we should be monitoring during the course of the consent if it is granted.
We spoke to Karen Pratt before, and she has undertaken to provide a 5 bit more information, and I think to gather that from those that are involved in fishing and diving in the South Taranaki basin, so are you in a position to help with that as well?
MR MALTHUS: Yes, very much so. I just need some clarity as to what you need. 10 Hopefully my wetsuit still fits.
MR THOMPSON: Well, if not, if not. The issue we want is location I guess, so are you happy to share?
15 MR MALTHUS: Happy to share marks and things like that as to where we do fish. We do have some marks pretty close to the mining area that have been pretty successful cod fishing spots in the past. I have dived some of that country up that way, be it that most of my diving's closer to the traps but, yes, happy to see that. I think you'll see the next 20 presentation will give you as good an answer as I can give, maybe a lot better.
MR THOMPSON: That'll be very helpful. Thanks very much.
25 MS McGARRY: Thank you, Mr Malthus. When you say "pretty close to the spot", close to the site, how close are your spots? I'm not asking you -- you don't have to tell me spot X, but --
MR MALTHUS: You're a bit sensitive about this. 30 MS McGARRY: Yes, I know. That is a problem. I know a lot of the recreational fishermen. They don't want to disclose this.
MR MALTHUS: No, it's not that bad. My furthest spot would be 12 nautical miles 35 from the Pātea Bar in a south-westerly direction, so that would bring us pretty close to the edge of it. We can certainly see the coupe platform quite clearly, which is of course on the other side of the area.
MS McGARRY: So that would bring you to within an area that would be within what's 40 been demonstrated as the plume?
MR MALTHUS: Look, the plume in all honesty travels from the edge of the mine right past Pātea and down past the traps. It's going right through there so, yes, we'd be almost where it's most condensed. In other words, it's 45 hardly started to spread if you went to that 12 nautical mile spot.
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MS McGARRY: Just on the perspective on the data that you've collected here, and I know it's just from your diary, but this is in a similar spot each year you return to?
5 MR MALTHUS: I'd have to say the sample's mixed. Yes, we do most of our fishing probably back towards the actual application spot. It tends to fish well for snapper and cod in the south-westerly direction, whereas we do most of our diving in a south-easterly direction.
10 [2.25 pm]
MS McGARRY: And when you go out for a day, you generally go for a sort of similar effort, a similar amount of time out on the water? I'm just trying to get a grip really on this. 15 MR MALTHUS: Yes, we would. The thing that determines it with Pātea is your tides. In a two tonne boat you don't want to be going over the bar with less than a metre under the boat, and so you're looking carefully at your swell map to tell you what your tides are and we really need two 20 hours either side of the tide to be going across the bar, so you would probably be looking at about a six-hour fishing period.
MS McGARRY: Thank you. In terms of what you said about the declining fishery, and you gave us some insight into why you think it is declining, and one 25 of those things was the increasing number of tourists. I'm not sure I understand the link of that.
MR MALTHUS: Yes. No, I'm saying tourists probably - I don't mean international tourists there, there'll be more people will travel to our fishery to fish 30 it and, hey, we don't own it, everyone does.
MS McGARRY: Yes, but that's not something that would be declining the fishery now you don't believe, but something for the future?
35 MR MALTHUS: No, it's already happening. Like, for example, two weeks ago -- no, maybe three weeks ago, I was speaking to one of the Coastguard members when there was a big anticyclone sitting over New Zealand down on the ramp and said to her, "How many boats went out today?" She said, "Oh, only about 40 today". I was, "Only?" and she said, 40 "No, yesterday there was near 60".
Now, we would have thought 10 years ago, probably 15 - 20 boats would have been a busy day, so a large increase in the New Zealand tourist, maybe some overseas tourists. 45 MS McGARRY: Thank you.
MR SHAW: Mr Coates?
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MR COATES: Just talking about recreational fisheries in terms of the knowledge of catch, is there any data at all on the quantum of catch, either in the South Taranaki Bight or New Zealand wide? 5 MR MALTHUS: Yes, this is a real -- well, New Zealand-wide there's probably guestimates through our own recreational fishing organisations, and I don't have anything accurate myself in that regard. I've tried to encourage my fellow club members to keep diaries, but I think you'd 10 have to bribe them with things like bottles of whisky at the AGMs or something like that to get them to hand in a diary but, no, I haven't had a lot of success in that regard, but you're welcome to use mine for what it's worth.
15 MR COATES: When was the limit on blue cod reduced?
MR MALTHUS: I think the next presenter may know more accurately than I do, but I think it would have been about 2010. I shifted south in 2008, and I think it was about two years after that. 20 MR COATES: Is that when you, in your graph, that could explain the reduction in numbers?
MR MALTHUS: The reduction in numbers. Yes, the only thing is the graph doesn't 25 always tell you how many people we've got on board either.
MR COATES: It doesn't tell you how many you threw back.
MR MALTHUS: Normally you would have three or four people on board and, yes, say 30 if you're getting -- well, if you've got three people on board and they're allowed to catch 10 blue cod each, that's 30 blue cod. Now, that doesn't happen very often these days, and certainly when it was 20, we used to get 60 blue cod all right. There's certainly no indication of that in a six-hour period now. Nothing like it. And of 35 course we can't go there anyway. Thirty's as many as we go, but we have many days where we'd come back at this time of the year with 12 - 15, which is a good catch. Hey, I don't have to fish to the limits, I don't want to, but reality is that that's with some reasonably experienced fishermen the number we got for the day of blue cod. 40 MR COATES: Looking at your suggestion that perhaps the term of the lease could be made five or seven years renewable, that's an interesting concept, but I'm not quite sure whether it's within our mandate, but thank you.
45 MR MALTHUS: Yes. No, I probably haven't done enough research on the areas of responsibility as far as the law and the hearing's concerned but, yes, it's something that certainly looks quite different to what I'm familiar with on land.
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MR SHAW: Mr Malthus, I'm going to ignore the advice I'm going to give my colleagues before we see the next submitter and ask you a question as well. Have you seen the result of the joint witness conferencing on 5 the effects on fish?
MR MALTHUS: No, I haven't.
[2.30 pm] 10 MR SHAW: The reason I ask is this, and the question deals with the size of the area that's directly affected, which is 66 kilometres square thereabouts, and this is the fish experts coming from the applicant, but also coming from independent folk engaged by the EPA and from 15 submitters, and it deals with the plume as well. They all agreed that the total consent area is 66, but the area actually may be smaller, so this is just the background. The median area of the plume which fish may avoid is between 20 and 80 kilometres square.
20 MR MALTHUS: Sorry?
MR SHAW: The median area of the plume in totally which fish may avoid is between 20 and 80 kilometres, depending on conditions. But its size and position will vary because of variation in conditions. 25 MR MALTHUS: Currents.
MR SHAW: This is really the thing that I want you to comment on. All agreed that the scale of impact is minor compared to the scale of the fish 30 populations in the South Taranaki Bight, and what you're saying to us is that you apprehend a much more significant?
MR MALTHUS: Well, if I'm looking at the fish population, that may be relatively minor when it comes to pelagic fish that move around. It may be 35 relatively minor when I think of sediment and crayfish, but I don't know whether those comments or those findings are appropriate when you consider blue cod that are highly territorial and also the length of the application period, because we're looking at sediment. It doesn't stay in the water in flotation all the time. It will settle. And it's that 40 settling process over a long approval period that concerns me deeply, and I don't know, and I don't know whether they know, what the impact's going to be on territorial blue cod that live right on the bottom.
45 MR SHAW: No, they're certainly making calculations based on the total fish population across the entire STB. But the reason I ask the question, Mr Malthus, does go to the particular issues that confront recreational fishers, and I for one, as Mr Thompson has said, and I'm, like him,
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similarly keen to understand the very specific impacts on the recreational fishery, which also of course goes to the question of customary gathering by local iwi. So, I appreciate the offer you've made in terms of identifying some of the areas where you think there 5 is particular impact for a particular species because of your focus on blue cod. Because we have been talking to experts around the perimeter and the seabed conditions, and mostly they've talked about the reef areas as being in general what people have described as unmapped reefs, they've said for the most part aren't. 10 MR MALTHUS: Sorry?
MR SHAW: They've talked about what have been described by submitters as unmapped reefs. The experts for the most part have said, no, they're 15 not unmapped reefs, there are areas of hardness and so forth that have -- and some reefs that come and go because sand washes off and washes on to them, but to describe them as reefs would be an overstatement, I think that's really what they've been saying.
20 So, this question of locating these things is particularly -- because it's a theme that's come through so many submissions, but it's not going to be good enough, I'm afraid, to just say, "Well, they're there and you have to take our word for it because we don't want to share the secrets". 25 MR MALTHUS: Oh, happy to.
MR SHAW: Because it will not cut the mustard.
30 MR MALTHUS: I think you make a good point. Very happy to share the marks, so long as you don't give them to my fishing mates.
MR SHAW: Yes.
35 MR MALTHUS: But, no, in saying that, it is important that you have some robust spots that we have, and if you want to dive it and check it -- see, the beauty of this area that's vulnerable to sediment is that most of it's diveable. It's 30 metres, which for the amateur diver is quite within their range. You can go and have a look, and even if the reef isn't showing up 40 very much on your sounder, the best way to test it is to get down there and have a look at it and, yes, some of it might only be rises that high, but quite capable of holding crayfish, and certainly a good habitat for blue cod, but you won't pick that up readily from the surface.
45 MR SHAW: I've got to say, it's been a while since I dived. Thirty metres was not so much a reasonable dive as the absolute limit for me in my --
MR MALTHUS: You'd be welcome to join us.
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MR SHAW: Okay. My wetsuit certainly wouldn't fit. All right, thank you very much. That was a very interesting submission, Mr Malthus.
5 [2.35 pm]
MR MALTHUS: Thanks for the opportunity.
MR SHAW: And, Mr Boyd, I gather we're expecting more of the same from what 10 Mr Malthus had to say.
MR BOYD: Might be similar. Might be similar. I might be able to show you what maybe the reefs look like.
15 MR SHAW: That would be very, very helpful, but particularly if we can then put those locations to experts so that they can make some assessment of it.
MR BOYD: That won't be a problem at all. 20 MR SHAW: Excellent. Okay, Mr Boyd, off you go. We are, I've got to say, we need to show restraint because we are typically managing 25 - 30 minutes for people rather than the 15 or thereabouts.
25 MR BOYD: Not a problem. I don't think I'll go over, so I'll do my best.
MR SHAW: Thank you.
MR BOYD: I'm a member of the South Taranaki Underwater Club. I'm passionate 30 about the unique and diverse marine communities found in the many reefs in the South Taranaki Bight. While I speak, I'd like to show some photos that are representative of the flora and fauna common to reefs in the South Taranaki Bight, which myself and other club members dive. 35 When TTRL first applied to the EPA for consent, it was obvious that the true knowledge of what lies beneath the waters of the South Taranaki Bight was familiar only to those of us fortunate enough to be divers, as there has been extremely little scientific research 40 conducted, with most scientific data and evidence coming from desktop studies.
As a means to address this situation, the South Taranaki Underwater Club established the South Taranaki Reef Life Project. The project 45 chose a reef located 11 kilometres offshore from Pātea at a depth of around 23 metres to conduct a study that aims to record the reef community, identify the factors that shape it, and record seasonal trends. This is achieved by utilising a dedicated team of volunteer
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citizen scientists working alongside marine scientists and with the help of experts from NIWA, Te Papa and universities.
So our little reef at 11 kilometres off, so that puts it about midway 5 between Pātea and the mining zone, and basically in a direct line that the plume would travel through.
Our project partners include local schools and iwi, who assist with historical knowledge, survey work and data analysis. The project has 10 employed the use of cameras on the reef to capture images for analysis and input into national databases and is shared with marine scientists. The sounds heard on the reef are also being monitored by a hydrophone.
15 Our project team has been invited to speak to many schools and community groups in South Taranaki, and the overwhelming response is, "Wow, we didn't know the beauty that exists on our back doorstep".
20 The South Taranaki Underwater Club is the recipient of an environmental award from the Taranaki Regional Council for engaging the community with science and education on protection of the marine environment through the South Taranaki Reef Life Project. 25 Now, on to concerns I have with TTRL's proposal. The plume generated by the mining and discharge operation. Even with TTRL's drastically revised modelling, a reduction of up to 40 per cent in benthic primary production is predicted, which in turn would have a 30 flow-on effect through the entire marine ecosystem of the South Taranaki bight, which would result in a vastly different environment to the present. The plume, as modelled, passes directly over many reefs, including our own project reef, and the north and south traps, which are noted as having outstanding value in the Taranaki Regional 35 Council's coastal plan.
I believe the extent of the plume will be far greater in these areas than TTRL are claiming, as their figures are obtained by averaging out the suspended sediment over a much broader area, but these and other 40 reefs will be affected by the densest part of the plume. River discharges and storm events can create disturbance to this marine environment, but nature always allows a respite in conditions and the balance returns. However, TTRL's proposal to create a disturbance 24/7 for up to 35 years. This unnatural occurrence must have a 45 dramatic effect on the delicate natural balance.
Light reduction: the same areas, according to TTRL's data, are predicted to receive up to a 50 per cent reduction in mid-water
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visibility. At the traps, they claim up to 26 days out of a predicted total of 125 good visibility days per year could be lost due to the mining operations. For divers who already have limited opportunities due to extreme weather conditions our coast endures, this is 5 devastating.
[2.40 pm]
On to TTRL's monitoring programme and the Technical Review 10 Group. This proposed monitoring programme is completely inadequate. TTRL has not included any group with local knowledge that has the ability to confirm the monitoring results provided by them to be a true and accurate account. TTRL propose the monitoring group meets annually to review the baseline monitoring results. 15 Again, this is woefully inadequate. A catastrophic change could well have occurred in a 12-month period.
Should TTRL be granted consent, it would be great to see someone like a member of our underwater club actually on that Technical 20 Review Group, because we have the ability to actually see what is happening. Can we just pop that map up, please?
MR SHAW: Are you talking about the monitoring map, not the one that's just come up? 25 MR BOYD: Yes, this map that's just come up now. Yes, so using data from TTRL's submission, the following map has been, as accurately as possible, plotted with the proposed monitoring sites. The only locations to be monitored that are reefs are the well-known north and 30 south traps. However, there are reefs closer to the area that consent has been sought for that should also be included. And when the known adverse effects from this proposed operation are expected to occur where the plume is greater, the monitoring sites should predominantly be located within the same area and fewer monitoring 35 sites in the area subject to more minimal effects. As you see on the map there, the plume is heading basically in towards the coast and wrapping around. There's very few monitoring sites there, but they're spread right around areas where the plume isn't even expected to be.
40 Now, economic benefits to the region. The economic benefits to the region from this proposal are questionable, but should the waters of the South Taranaki bight be compromised in their ability to sustain the current level of marine diversity and abundance, the income to many local businesses from the sale of boats, servicing, fuel, food, 45 etc, to the many boaties, fishermen and divers would be at risk, not to mention the loss to commercial fishing interests.
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Could you pop up the TTRL photos that I had there, please? The next two images are the only images submitted by TTRL in their application as being referred to as reef. So they're a little bit different to what we've already had a look at. So would you mind running that 5 video, please?
(video played)
So this is a dive about two weeks ago. These images are just from 10 one dive on the reef that we're studying with the project.
MR SHAW: And the vague location of the reef?
MR BOYD: That's 11 kilometres straight out from Pātea. 15 MR SHAW: Okay.
MR BOYD: Those fish there are the common roughy, the one that I think in Mrs Pratt's they were classed as being rare. 20 (video played)
The sponges, they're very abundant. They are our corals. They are our main filter feeders. 25 (video played)
[2.45 pm]
30 (video played)
So this is just one reef that we chose to study, because it's much easier to study one particular area.
35 MR SHAW: Is that reef mapped? You don't know?
MR BOYD: It's not on the general marine map, no, but then there's not a lot that is. It's shown as a depth line on there.
40 MR SHAW: As a?
MR BOYD: As a depth line on the marine charts, but yes.
MR SHAW: Yes. Oh, you're done, are you? 45 MR BOYD: Yes, that's fine, thanks.
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MS McGARRY: The pictures that you've shown us and the pictures in your submission and the video there, is that the same project reef?
MR BOYD: Absolutely. 5 MS McGARRY: It is. Now, can we go back to the bathymetric slide? Telling us how many kilometres off Pātea means not much to us. I just wonder if you could give us an idea on this location map. Maybe you could come around our side of the screen here to show us. 10 MR BOYD: So that mark is just on here.
MR SHAW: Okay.
15 MS McGARRY: Just on there? Thank you.
MR SHAW: I'm going to jump back into the queue, at the head of it, because I can.
MR BOYD: I thought you were going to pop your wetsuit on. 20 MR SHAW: Because I can. Look, Mr Boyd, the only question I want to ask you is this: I think for all of us, I've said before the question of the impact on recreational fishers is really important, a really important consideration for us. 25 MR BOYD: Yes.
MR SHAW: You've talked about representation on the Technical Advisory Group in the event that consent is granted and that group is established. 30 MR BOYD: Correct.
MR SHAW: Have you had already any discussions with the applicant in respect of the level of engagement that may be available to you? 35 MR BOYD: No, we haven't had much discussion at all. We had one visit from them in the early stages, but that was all.
MR SHAW: All right. And I want you to think about this and not to take from the 40 question any suggestion that we are any further down the track than we are, but in the event that consent is granted, we are going to inevitably be attaching conditions to that consent or imposing conditions in association with that consent.
45 MR BOYD: Right.
MR SHAW: And my question is quite simply whether or not you, your friends and colleagues who have similar local knowledge and the clubs would be
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prepared to sit down and look and think about thresholds and all those things that may be attached to any consent to enable the application of conditions that would protect the asset that's important to you.
5 MR BOYD: Absolutely.
MR SHAW: Okay. Okay, I must confess, I've been thinking carefully about ways in which we could get something approaching, for want of a better word, expert conferencing for people - by the definitions we work in - 10 non-expert.
MR BOYD: Well, it scares me that the Technical Review Group, as it was posed in the application, it was basically reliant on evidence that was presented or that was gathered by TTRL that was going to be 15 presented.
MR SHAW: Gathered on behalf of them.
MR BOYD: Yes, okay. 20 MR SHAW: I think it's a very important thing that we have to accept is that, in general, people who are engaged as experts by applicants - and for that matter, by submitters - do their best to apply a professional judgment to the task at hand. We have to start from that position, but 25 there is also no question that there are people who are expert in different ways who would not pass muster as experts in the general rules that we would apply, but who know a lot about stuff, for want of a better way of putting it.
30 [2.50 pm]
And it's the engagement of those people that does interest me and I think all of us have a similar interest in terms of identifying gaps, and indeed, as I say, if consent were to be granted, identifying conditions. 35 MR BOYD: All right, so you'll definitely see the reefs are something that's worth monitoring. That's where a lot of the juvenile fish begin and it's the basic building blocks for the marine ecosystem out there.
40 MR SHAW: What do you so for a living, sir? Are you free to fish?
MR BOYD: I wish I was. No, I work for Fonterra.
MR SHAW: Okay, all right. Well, I will now turn to my colleagues. Mr 45 Thompson.
MR THOMPSON: Mr Boyd, no question, just lots of thanks. Thanks for a great presentation and thank you for agreeing to engage with us to identify
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the features that are important and agreeing to subsequently participate in a forum or a group to try to drive some sensible conditions, if that can be the case, as well. So thanks a lot.
5 MS McGARRY: Thank you. Just one more, and I know you're going to come forward with this, and I probably put Ms Pratt on the spot as a non-diver, just to put the information across. But in terms of the location of the crack, are you familiar with that spot?
10 MR BOYD: I'm not.
MS McGARRY: You're not?
MR BOYD: I know the guys that have found it and they keep it pretty quiet, but 15 they are going to take me out there, but yes.
MS McGARRY: Okay, thank you.
MR BOYD: I don't know the exact location. From what I know, it's reasonably 20 close to the mining area though.
MS McGARRY: That's fine. Thank you.
MR COATES: Just one question, and that is when you talk about more monitoring 25 sites to the east of the mining area, would you just propose putting them on a line bisecting those two angles that are already covered?
MR BOYD: Yes, just a few more in there, just particularly if we can identify the reef sites, because then you have got something to monitor against. 30 You can't really monitor just sand so well, but if we've got it reef where there is a lot of benthic growth, etc, which can be monitored, yes.
MR COATES: And a similar number of monitors? Could any of the others be 35 dispensed with?
MR BOYD: Well, I think the ones to the west, there's not much going to be going on to the west, is there, from any of the modelling that's been shown?
40 MR COATES: Thank you. That gives us some advice.
MR SHAW: Thank you very much, Mr Boyd.
And we are quite deliberately staying in the same territory with the 45 next few witnesses and we've got the Ngā Motu Marine Reserve Society, whose interests may or may not be entirely coincidental with those of recreational fishermen, but nonetheless, I'm sure we'll deal with many of the same issues.
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Ms Hammonds and Ms Smith? Welcome, ladies, Ms Hammonds and Ms Smith. You've been here for a wee while now, so you're familiar with the drill. 5 MS SMITH: Yes.
MS HAMMONDS: Yes, thank you. I'm just wondering if there's a clean glass. I wouldn't mind a drink of water. 10 MR SHAW: I think we can organise something for you. Why don't you stay seated --
MS HAMMONDS: Yes. No, they're not clean. 15 MR SHAW: -- and the staff will see if they can sort something out.
MS HAMMONDS: Thank you. Hi. Yes, so I'm Barbara Hammonds and this is Elise Smith, and as you say, we're from the Ngā Motu Reserve Society. A 20 brief background: I have a Master's in environment science; Elise has a science Master's and post-graduate diploma in GIS and our society successfully applied for the Tapuae Marine Reserve off the coast of Taranaki, south of the Ngā Motu Islands, in 2008.
25 Okay, so you will see some of the same photos again, because we haven't seen the other people's presentations. That was from their project reef, South Taranaki Underwater Club's project reef. Adaptive management is clearly one of the key issues with this application and the MFE report was prepared in part because of this 30 TTRL application and says:
"It is clear that adaptive management cannot compensate for a lack of baseline data, baseline environmental data or inadequate modelling. In the words of the King Salmon Board of Inquiry, some information 35 gaps cannot be simply filled by invoking adaptive management."
So on to our key questions. Has the applicant used the best available information? Is the baseline data adequate for designing a fit for purpose adaptive management plan? Will the adaptive management 40 and monitoring proposed adequately protect the environment?
[2.55 pm]
We are going to look at four areas, answer those questions in terms of 45 four areas, so primary production first. There is going to be a large reduction in light of 10 per cent to 40 per cent over 704 square kilometres when mining at site A. The applicant only provided averages of the decrease in primary production over the sediment
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model domain, which as you know is a huge area, something like 13,000 square kilometres, and that's been addressed by other submitters as well. There's been no modelling to assess the primary production downstream of the mined area, ie in the plume, where the 5 plume is most going to be. And there's been no measurements actually of primary productivity that is growth or photosynthetic rate at all. They're proposing to monitor biomass using chlorophyll a, which begs the question of what would happen if there is photoadaptation of the phytoplankton that changes that ratio of 10 biomass to chlorophyll a. So we believe that this information is not adequate to assess the knock-on effects within the food web and it raises serious concerns about the impacts within the wider ecosystem.
Okay, reefs. As you've heard already from submitters today, there's 15 been limited benthic sampling within the area of the plume and this image here, which was in our submission as well, it shows the overlay of the NIWA sampling sites on the plume, and as you can see, most of them are not in the area of the plume. Large sections of the area within the plume have not been surveyed. So just to be very clear, 20 these are the only places that the multi-beam sonar surveys were done by the applicant, only the coloured-in areas there. This was used to ground truth reef locations. We believe that's just not possible with such a limited area covered by the detailed surveys.
25 Our next slide is similar to what you've seen already. I think Karen may have put this up. The multi-beam is just the outlined areas in black. The peach, grey, orange and yellow circles are the NIWA sample sites. The pink circles and shapes are the reefs and foul ground identified by the fishers and divers that Karen has spoken to 30 so far. And the majority of these have not been surveyed. Hopefully I'm not going to give anyone's secrets away, but you see that line of four pink dots in a row there? I understand that's the crack. As far as I understand, that's the location of the crack. It's 6 nautical miles from the edge of the mining site. No, so it's 6 kilometres. It's 4 35 nautical miles long and it's 6 kilometres from the edge of the mine site. But I'm sure Karen or the others can give you the detail for that.
And this is just the DOC map that you've already seen as well. It would be too complicated to put them all together, but the light and 40 the dark blue areas are the reef or the potential reef on the DOC database. Only a few of those were investigated by NIWA, and yes, some of them were shown to be sand ripples or low relief, but very few have been investigated.
45 So on to the reefs within the influence of the plume. These next slides show species that are very sensitive to being covered by sediments, and there's no condition of sedimentation, as far as we understand, in the application. This shows a horizontal sponge
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garden. This is a permanent assemblage. It's not just something that comes and goes. These are not gone today, here tomorrow kinds of reefs. These are very sensitive to smothering. This is high relief hard bottom. So it might be sensitive to frequent disturbance, but there 5 will be long periods of non-disturbance, which is why it can survive. It's not the same as constant disturbance that could happen if the mining goes ahead.
Okay, so this is also shown on the project reef, the jewel anemones. 10 This is the project reef, 25 metres deep where the kelp is growing there, the ecklonia. That needs high water quality, high water clarity or it can't grow there. And I think it's already been referred to that only maybe one instance of kelp was found through the NIWA surveys. 15 Okay, project reef again, and next we have -- this is the crack. There's a video online which you may or may not have had a chance to look at.
20 [3.00 pm]
If you look on YouTube, you will find this video. It's a highly diverse community. It's 4 nautical miles long, 6 kilometres from the mining site. It wasn't discovered by the applicant's surveys. So please take a 25 look at the video if you're able to.
Conclusion. The reefs: inadequate baseline information on rocky reefs in the application; large areas of the plume have not yet been surveyed, including Graham Bank, which the Cawthron report that 30 was referred to by the TRC indicated could be an area of outstanding natural character and it hasn't been investigated; missed the crack altogether; adequate baseline data we would have thought would be required at the application stage for designing a fit for purpose adaptive management plan. 35 Marine mammals: again, multiple witnesses have already demonstrated that the best available information hasn't been used. We are going to use orca as an example. In the application, there were only six sightings noted over 25 years. Project Hotspot, which 40 is one of our projects, in one year there had been 84 sightings on 29 different days, so as you will probably no doubt know, they are nationally critical, which is the highest threat status in the New Zealand threat classification system. This was in our submission, but the photos weren't. The photos are actual sightings of orca around the 45 Taranaki coast. So the habitat model used by TTRL, I think it has already been covered that it used inadequate data on a previous day. However, you will note that the better habitat, which are the lighter colours, are down kind of around the area of the plume, but as we say,
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it's based on inadequate data and the orca don't seem to have seen that, because from our sightings and observations, it's a great habitat for orca. They've often been observed actively feeding on rays in the shallows, so that is 50 per cent of sightings where behaviour is 5 recorded, they're feeding on rays. I've been told that's an eagle ray, so the black fin is orca, the eagle ray is the brown one.
They've been observed feeding in most bays around Taranaki and they seem to be likely to stay for several months, but we don't really 10 know. We don't actually know how important this area is for their feeding, the Pātea shoals area, but there are plenty of prey species there, the rays and sharks. This is actually a video which we decided we don't have time to show, but you can watch it - it's embedded in your PDF - of an orca feeding on rays. So again, using orca as an 15 example, we think there's inadequate baseline information in the application. And we would have thought that baseline data should have been required at the application stage or adequate for designing the fit for purpose adaptive management plan.
20 I note that one of the expert witnesses said that mining will have no impact on orca. I don't see how that claim can be made when we don't actually know how many there are there and we haven't measured what kind of impact there could be. So we don't know what the impact will be, but we are pretty certainly there will be an impact. 25 So on to seabirds. Oh yes, we will get to that. So we are going to use little blue penguins as an example. Again, we think that the applicant has not used the best available information. I know you've already heard from John Cockeram on this as well. The graphic to the left 30 shows the information that was used by the applicant from eBird, no evidence of little blue penguins in Taranaki. Compare with NatureWatch New Zealand on the right-hand side, 236 little blue penguin sightings. We have substantial evidence that waters off South Taranaki are an important feeding ground for little blue 35 penguins, anecdotal observations from fishermen and the paper that you have in front of you, which tracked penguins on Motuara Island in the Marlborough Sounds. We did have some of this information in our submission. However, we now have the paper that's been accepted. So you've already seen this information, but 11 of the 14 40 penguins tracked swam up to South Taranaki from Motuara Island, which is this little square here, so 11 of the tracks show them going up to South Taranaki to feed. At least one of them swam more than 200 kilometres on its round journey.
45 [3.05 pm]
They were incubating eggs at the time. They're not going to swim that far without a reason, so to us it indicates that all patches of ocean
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aren't equal. Yes, they're mobile, yes, they can go somewhere else, but if there's no food somewhere else, they won't go somewhere else. They're going there because there's food there.
5 Okay, and we noted in the transcripts that you made some comments about only having two seabird experts in the expert joint conferencing. We would like to suggest that perhaps if you needed a third, you could consider Susan Waugh from Te Papa. She's one of the co-authors of this paper. 10 Okay, so more on little blue penguins. There are two genotypes of them and there's only a handful of large populations of the New Zealand genotype. We know that the sediment plume will increase the water turbidity. We believe it will disrupt the food web. Both of 15 those will affect penguin foraging efficiency. They're visual feeders, as you know, and the prey could also be visual feeders, so the prey species themselves might be affected, plus the base of the food web is quite likely to have been disrupted as well by the lower light levels.
20 Oh, sorry, one more point in there. The sand mining or seabed mining we believe will put further stress on what already seems to be a struggling colony at Motuara Island, which is one of those large colonies of which there is only a handful. So the potential impacts could be at the taxon level. So again, we think there's been 25 inadequate baseline information, and under these circumstances, we really think that adaptive management is just not appropriate. There's such a high risk of potential impact. The available data indicates the shelf waters in South Taranaki are an important feeding ground for the at-risk little blue penguin. The potential for impacts at the taxon 30 level, NZCPS, as you're aware, says, "Avoid adverse effects on at-risk and threatened species" so we really believe that the Committee must favour caution in environmental protection and decline this application.
35 So back to our initial three questions: has the applicant used the best available information? We don't think so. Is the baseline data adequate for designing a fit for purpose adaptive management plan? Again, we don't think so. Will the adaptive management and monitoring proposed adequate protect the environment? We don't 40 believe so. And to conclude, we have a final important point that we picked up from the expert witnesses. In our submission, we made the comment that:
"It is not clear how long-term ecological impacts from mining [and 45 this has been referred to as well today] can be separated and identified from natural variability in order to trigger a management response prior to tipping points being reached and unacceptable impacts occurring."
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So we have this final question: can the applicant correctly interpret the data and respond in order to prevent long-term unacceptable impact from occurring? 5 In Dan Govier's evidence on paragraph 182 he commented about when he used to work for the regional council monitoring the reef at the end of Greenwood Road, which is a control site. He visited it in 2003 and then again I think that was meant to be 2004. The first time 10 the sand was inundated and then the sand had receded and he said the marine life was recovering, which was supported by the monitoring result. So that was one year. And then he goes on to say:
"Ongoing ecological monitoring by the TRC also concurs with this 15 observation of sand inundation and recession along the Taranaki intertidal coastline and recovery of."
This is an example, because what you will actually find, here is this Greenwood Road reef. This was more recent results. The link will 20 take you to the monitoring report.
[3.10 pm]
What you have in front of you is a two-page extract from the report 25 that shows a graph, which I will get to on the next slide. This is the reef with one year apart: no sand, lots of sand. Okay. Have you got the two-page in front of you? So, the rocky shore report trend analysis for Greenwood Road reef actually showed a significant decrease in diversity at the Greenwood Road reef over 21 years, 30 because that is the amount of data they have now, that line going down. There is something called the sand-adjusted trend which apparently shows that this effect is to do with sand. For technical details just look at the report on that. The report concludes:
35 "The trend analysis indicates there has been a significant decrease in species richness and diversity at this site which appears to have been caused by an increased sand supply from the mountain combined with oceanographic conditions."
40 Yet Govier failed to recognise that ongoing periodic sand inundation has resulted in this significant long-term decrease in species diversity. Yes, this example relates to naturally occurring events and they are inshore intertidal reefs. However, it just really raises the question for us: is the TTRL monitoring plan and adaptive management sufficient 45 to avoid similar misinterpretation for the offshore reefs? To answer our final question that we posed: can they correctly interpret the data and respond in order to prevent long-term unacceptable impact from occurring? We have serious concerns about that.
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In conclusion, we believe adaptive management will not adequately protect given the inadequate baseline data, that tipping points may be reached before a management response is triggered and that the 5 application is not in line with the information principles of the EEZ Act and the policies of the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement and that the Decision-making Committee must favour caution and environmental protection and decline this application. Thank you.
10 MR SHAW: Thank you. Ms McGarry?
MS McGARRY: First of all, thank you very much for anticipating that I was going to ask for this report, so you are very clever. I had got through your references at the back of your submission, which was very interesting 15 in itself, and that one stood out to me as one that I wanted to see, so thank you for anticipating that.
You have talked about triggers and limits in your submission and the fact that in your view these are based on the financial viability of the 20 operation. I just wanted to scratch away at that a little bit. You're meaning in terms of upper limits for the discharge rate based on the 8,000 tonnes per hour, those kind of things. You're saying that has all been based on the front-end dollar assessment and then all the sciences come off that point. Is that what you're saying and not based 25 on the environmental assessment?
MS HAMMONDS: Yes.
MS McGARRY: I don't know if you were here yesterday when we talked about -- 30 MS HAMMONDS: We weren't, no.
MS McGARRY: -- adaptive management and how a staged approach can go one way and perhaps adaptive management could also go the other way by 35 starting at a certain level and sort of scaling back. What you are suggesting here is the applicants come up with the number that they need to make it viable and then they're saying to us, "Here's the limits but if we can't meet them we'll do things within our operation to meet those limits". So you're concerned about that approach. You're 40 saying that it is the backwards approach, that you should be looking at the environment and the limits of the environment and then work forwards from there.
MS HAMMONDS: Yes. 45 MS McGARRY: That's what you're saying in a nutshell?
MS SMITH: I think it's data poor. I think we need much more information.
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MS HAMMONDS: And that concern of tipping points being reached before the management response is invoked is a major concern.
5 MS SMITH: Yes.
MS McGARRY: In terms of these graphs out of the report, the rocky shore report - and thanks for putting the page 2 there in terms of a statistical analysis - maybe you can put some context around that, the rocky shore report. 10 Was it aimed at one particular area or ...
MS HAMMONDS: No, it was rocky shores over the whole of the Taranaki coast, I think.
[3.15 pm] 15 MS SMITH: It's 55 pages. There is a PDF on the drive for you and you can see the whole thing.
MS McGARRY: Thank you. 20 MS HAMMONDS: And so this was just one example, yes, of --
MS SMITH: We used this because these photographs, the photographs in Dan Govier's evidence came straight out the Taranaki Regional Council 25 report.
MS HAMMONDS: He uses the same photos.
MS SMITH: On the very next page are the conclusions, which are that long term 30 natural sand was having a debilitating effect, so he reached the wrong conclusion there.
MS McGARRY: Yes. We saw Mr McLay this morning from the Taranaki Regional Council and I didn't know what you were going to say before I posed 35 the question whether there are any long-term trends. So you would dispute what Mr McLay said this morning?
MS HAMMONDS: Yes, I suspect --
40 MR SHAW: It's all right, he is not behind you.
MS HAMMONDS: He is, he's sitting at the back. I suspect that he just wasn't familiar enough with the report's conclusions.
45 MS McGARRY: So, again, you're urging us there caution and that there is more information available that would suggest – that we could look at to get an idea of what is going on with the state of the environment now?
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MS HAMMONDS: Yes, and although, as I said, these are inshore reefs, they're not those mid-level reefs that we're talking about that haven't been discovered. It just gives you an example of how this kind of thing can have an 5 effect over time and you actually need to be very careful with your assessments and you need to know what is there to start with.
MS SMITH: I'd like to make a comment. There is a lot of sponge research. Dr Chris Battershill, Waikato University, I think his PhD was in sponges 10 and also horizontal reefs. So Parininihi has got vertical reefs and this area seems to be more horizontal. I think there is a lot more work needs to be done about how they clear themselves of sediment, or follow the research.
15 MS McGARRY: Well, thank you very much. The information that you've put before us in that short period of time is quite astounding, so thank you very much for your efforts.
MS HAMMONDS: Okay. Thank you. 20 MR SHAW: Mr Thompson?
MR THOMPSON: Yes, thanks very much for a great presentation. Could you explain to me the aims and objectives and activities of the Ngā Motu Marine 25 Reserve Society?
MS SMITH: Yes. Twenty years ago we started off with the aim to gather more information about local marine life, coastal and marine life, with the aim of extending the SLIMP area to make it into a marine reserve and 30 it is the Ngā Tapuwae Marine Reserve. We went through the process of creating it and collecting information and liaising with the local community. Our purposes are really protection and information gathering on marine life, on education, on supporting further research.
35 MS HAMMONDS: Yes, definitely, we're very keen on research.
MR THOMPSON: So your initial objective was the establishment of a reserve and now you have just broadened the mandate since then, I guess.
40 MS SMITH: Our principles that we were incorporated under were those.
MS HAMMONDS: It always included that objective of scientific research and education, yes.
45 MR THOMPSON: Thank you.
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MS McGARRY: Just one follow-up question; I'll jump in before Mr Coates. Just in terms of your diagrams here and it shows the disposal site area, these are from the last application, are they?
5 MS HAMMONDS: That was when they were done and there has been no further surveys done. So, yes, that was when those multibeam sonar were done and I read in the transcripts, or maybe it was the expert witness conferencing, that Dr MacDiarmid said that they had been presented in this application but they were embedded. So people were confused 10 for a while about had there been additional work done or not, but apparently not. This was the only work that has been done with that kind of detailed multibeam sonar.
MS McGARRY: Yes. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that point. 15 MR SHAW: Mr Coates?
MR COATES: Thank you for a very comprehensive and well-illustrated piece of evidence. I just wanted to check, when you talk about being data 20 poor, do you mean on the baseline data?
MS HAMMONDS: Yes. What is there already, yes.
MR COATES: Yes. 25 MS SMITH: The assemblage of species, frequency.
MR COATES: Thank you.
30 [3.20 pm]
MR SHAW: Thank you very much. You heard my comments earlier about our views around the recreational fishery and this question of local knowledge. 35 MS HAMMONDS: Yes.
MR SHAW: I'm a little bit concerned as I look forward- this doesn't refer to your information - about our ability to get through the rest of the day, so 40 I'm going to thank you very much. It's not a lack of interest but I do have to be conscious of a lack of time and I think we're going to have to go through a "is your question really necessary" exercise with ourselves if we are going to deal with the number of people who want to talk to us and the amount of time we have got at our disposal, but 45 thank you very much.
MS HAMMONDS: Okay.
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MR SHAW: Before I go any further - and please don't stay, just organise ourselves - I just want to do a little bit of a roll call and understand who is here in terms of the folk who are scheduled to make submissions or representations to us. Representative of Te Ngaru Roa ā Maui? 5 You're here? Okay. Hugh Russell? Is Mr Russell here? He is not due for a few minutes but I'm going to go through these next few ones as well. John Milnes? You're here, Mr Milnes. And representatives of the Raglan Sport Fishing Club? You're here. Nicola Patrick has already given -- Alessandra Keighley? No. Again, a little further 10 down the track. But I am going to ask now then that we hear from Te Ngaru Roa ā Maui. We are going to stop at 3.30 for a cup of tea. That doesn't mean you are going to be shut down at that point but unless you're very close to finishing, we will be breaking so that we can sort out in our heads what we are going to do about what is going 15 to be either be a very long night indeed - too long - but also the need obviously to hear from those people who have indicated they want to talk to us. All right.
Welcome. So, Mr Malibu Hamilton; is that right? Thank you. You 20 have been watching for a while so you're familiar with the drill and please begin with your representations to us.
MR HAMILTON: Thank you. Kia ora to the Committee. My name is Malibu Hamilton, and I will take the first page as being read. The overview. This oral 25 representation is to support the submission that was lodged at the start of the process. Most of the matters within that submission remain on foot. Te Ngaru Roa ā Maui maintain that despite additional information and evidence put forward by TTR, the proposed application does not remedy, mitigate or avoid adverse impacts to the 30 marine environment and significant uncertainty remains.
Benthic. The seabed strip mining to 11 metres deep will destroy the benthic environment. TTR has no mitigation or remedy for that destruction but argues that within a short period of time 35 recolonisation will take place, based on experiments in the Wellington harbour and not on the south Taranaki coast. Dr Shaw Mead in his evidence and rebuttal highlights serious flaws in the TTR proposal and states the removal of the benthic organisms and substrate changes are not insignificant or minor and could be 40 catastrophic. Dr Shaw Mead states that the recolonisation may never occur and that the HRW laboratory tests are flawed. More importantly, the three samples for testing are likely not representative of the 66 square kilometre area. Additionally, he disagrees with others in the joint witness statements and does not agree with the 45 assumption that modelling was conservative. He considers that the modelling underestimates surface SSC by a factor of two to five and underestimates SSC at the seabed by over ten times.
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The parties to the JWS agreed that no new benthic information from field surveys had been gathered in the time between the two TTR applications. Furthermore, the JWS has a long list of uncertainties included in their statement. 5 [3.25 pm]
Of note in the JWS was that there was insufficient time to discuss environmental triggers, monitoring sites and conditions due to time 10 constraints. The issue of time constraints is spread throughout several JWS statements. The process is not allowed due diligence by the various experts. That in itself is unsatisfactory.
The sediment plume has been widely debated but it is still relevant to 15 state that there is gross uncertainty in relation to the TTR claims of flocculation reducing the total plume area. Several of the submitters' experts state there was uncertainty on the sediment plume pathways, distances the plume may travel and the area it could cover. Dr Gregory Barbara states that the SSC modelling has been based on the 20 assumption the mined sand consists of less than 4 per cent clay and silts. However, if it is greater than 4 per cent then the clays and silts are likely to travel further distances, would have wide-reaching implications as muds and clays can travel further than the sand in the water column. Furthermore, there is some uncertainty around the full 25 extent of the potential impacts from the mining plume.
Dr Gregory Barbara states that the sediment fines have longer settlement times and will stay suspended for longer periods and travel much greater distances than 5 kilometres, which could impact on the 30 macroalgal reefs outside the PPA in the wider STB. Te Ngaru Roa ā Maui submitted that the discharge of sediment either from the underflow or the overflow process will create a significant adverse effect to the marine environment, resulting in a net loss to the ecosystem. There will be further impacts from the discharge from the 35 hyperbaric pressure filter aboard the FSO vessel, which will be discharged just below the water surface. The fine sediment will further add to the sediment plumes effects and cause impacts to light penetration. The reverse circulation drilling operation will use high water pressure to create a slurry mix that will be sucked up the pipe 40 systems. The slurry mixed water will discharge into the surface water, adding cumulatively to the other plume impacts.
There will be ten reverse osmosis units used to produce the required 5 million tonnes of fresh water per year needed for the processing units 45 to assist the cleansing of the vanadium-rich bearing titanomagnetite. 30,000 tonnes of fresh water a day is needed. The desalinisation plant and discharge will consist of concentrated brine, mixed salinity and is toxic to aquatic species and out of keeping with the surrounding
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environment. The buoyancy of the fresh water content from the discharge will create adverse effects from the vertical upwelling to the surface water. Fresh water sits on the surface water as it is lighter than sea water. Therefore, there is a high potential that a fresh water 5 wedge of sediment will stay suspended for longer periods of time.
TTR has failed to provide adequate information on the number and species of marine mammals in the area, the effects of noise, destruction of habitat and ecological effects from sediment as result 10 of the seabed mining proposal. TTR has only undertaken a limited population survey in a small area and uses unreliable information, including public sightings, instead of taking comprehensive, systematic marine mammal surveys. The Māui's dolphin range includes the inshore area of the seabed mining operation and there are 15 at least 33 marine mammal species that use the Cook Strait area; see Professor Liz Slooten's evidence. Noise can create hearing damage, behaviour response such as stress and displacement from the area along with direct damage to organs and tissues. Professor Slooten identifies that TTR has failed to provide noise measurements of the 20 ships, dredges and generators that will be used in the mining operation and background ambient noise of Taranaki. Additionally it is stated that the background noise provided by TTR was from the Lyttelton harbour and was not appropriate or creditable.
25 Dr Leigh Torres states there is a high potential that blue whale forage and breed in the STB due in part to an abundance of food availability from an upwelling of krill in the larger area. There is also potential that there may be a New Zealand population that uses the STB throughout the year. Of concern is that the seabed mining operation 30 could cause blue whales to move from the area due to disruption to the foraging area and create interference with breeding. In addition, noise impacts could disrupt the low frequency communication of blue whales. Dr Leigh Torres states that TTR has failed to effectively evaluate low frequency noise despite acknowledging that low 35 frequency noise will be elevated in a seabed mining process. Paragraphs 37 to 43 of the evidence of Dr Leigh Torres is critical of Hegley's evidence in the evaluations and maintains that the information impact assessment is flawed.
40 Te Ngaru Roa ā Maui submit there has been no robust environmental economic analysis provided in the application on the natural capital of the wider area and that TTR has failed to take into consideration the natural capital externalities.
45 [3.30 pm]
Te Ngaru Roa ā Maui also submitted that the TTR has failed to take into account the ecosystem functions and ecosystem services that any
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resource take should be balanced on and argues that the economic benefits do not stack up to scrutiny.
In his evidence, Jim Binney also states that TTR analysis is devoid of 5 environmental or social costs and TTR has not considered such items as fishing, recreation and impacts to natural capital and considers that the lack of proper analysis is problematic to demonstrate the net worth of the project to New Zealanders. Jim Binney estimates indicate that the present value of the environmental damage could be 10 in the range of $28 million to $543 million and that a comprehensive benefit cost analysis is the appropriate economic methodology of the regulatory approvals process. Also that using the I-O approach for the economic analysis used to the justify the project is flawed and inferior as it tends to overestimate impacts. Disappointingly, only 15 NZ$133 million will be actually spent in New Zealand out of the estimated NZ$254 million of project expenditure on inputs. In comparison, the $28 million to $543 million potential environmental costs definitely outweigh any potential benefits. Jim Binney claims that there will be very little benefit during construction in the 20 operational phase.
The GHD report also arrives at a similar position by stating that it is likely that the economic impacts suggested in the report may be slightly overstated when applied on the national level. Both Jim 25 Binney and GHD stated that transparency was an issue and it was difficult to verify and compare the results stated by TTR in economic impacts, resulting in a degree of uncertainty.
In conclusion, the approach taken by TTR is to present the big 30 picture scenario by stating that the seabed mining area is tiny in comparison with the greater South Taranaki Bight and that new laboratory testing by HRW for plume effects is minimal. Certainly the underestimates of surface SSC by a factor of 2.5 and underestimates of SSC at the seabed by over 10 times is far from 35 minimal. Te Ngaru Roa ā Maui consider it is disingenuous to state that the PPA area is tiny and does demonstrate that the company appears to disregard the fact that it has legislative responsibilities regarding the 66 square kilometres of the PPA area.
40 TTR puts forward the view that there is no uncertainty of information and no need to undertake more baseline research. TTR states that substantial work was undertaken before lodging this application, yet many experts are presenting evidence that states the opposite and some experts maintain that apart from the testing by HRW and a rejig 45 of the conditions, very little has been done since the last application that was refused. TTR instead attempt to obfuscate the facts by making big picture statements. TTR are seeking to gain approval to exploit the seabed and then start a monitoring programme, an
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investigation for two years as part of an adaptive management approach. The proposed environmental triggers and limits in the adaptive management approach has been called into question by several experts. The EPA key issues report in paragraph 81 presents 5 four questions for the DMC that should have been answered well before this stage, ie is measuring turbidity appropriate as a surrogate for SSC? Te Ngaru Roa ā Maui have not forgotten the consternation that TTR caused by forcing the redacted information sections and forced confidential agreements. In hindsight, the fact that the three 10 samples tested by HRW are likely not representative of the 66 square kilometres area should not be a surprise.
Te Ngaru Roa ā Maui seek that the DMC refuse the application in its entirety and take the matters in appendix S as being read, but they are 15 a brief outline with regard to the lack of baseline information, and that the proposal should be turned down. I would like to add that this brief presentation that I have done now should be read concurrent with regards to our 17-page submission that we submitted at the start of the process because there were far more matters there that were 20 able to be raised. I believe that I think it is appropriate that they get read so you can come to a decision of what our view is. Thank you.
MR SHAW: Thank you. I've got no questions for you, Mr Hamilton. We are going to break for a cup of coffee or tea in a few minutes. 25 MR HAMILTON: Thank you. Are you happy?
[3.35 pm]
30 MR SHAW: Just bear with me for a moment, Mr Hamilton, because what I want to say does affect your presentation. It is not intended to in any way diminish what you have had to say to us, but several times today we have had material from submitters which is a review, a reprise of material that has been presented to us by other experts. I understand 35 that that helps people to collect their thoughts and to systemise, if you like, their overall position in respect to the application, but it doesn't help us a lot in the sense that the statements of experts who are quoted at some length are being quoted in evidence that we have already heard or being quoted in terms of their response to joint witness 40 statements. It is material that is already in front of us and one of the things we are going to have to do this afternoon after we finish here is to try and make sure that we don't do that so that we do have time to explore those issues that are new for us.
45 But, look, we will come back to you, Mr Hamilton. We're going to have a cup of tea now and it may be that my colleagues have got questions for you.
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MR HAMILTON: With respect, Mr Chairperson, I would like to just say this. In fact, my presentation, as I said at the end there, was to actually show that others actually validate the information that I have provided and we have provided in our submission. It validates it because while we are 5 laypeople, we've actually said a whole lot of broad enough statements but a whole lot of issues that were in our 17-page submission. I believe what I've done is showed that other experts are saying the similar thing as we are and that is why I have done it in that manner, sir. 10 (applause)
MR SHAW: I understand precisely what you are saying. Look, I am telling people we are not going to have applause here. You will be asked to leave if 15 it continues. We are trying to get a serious matter out of the way and I am quite serious when I say that. Please understand that if we are having material that is repetitive in terms of material that has already been put in front of us - I understand why you did it, I didn't stop you and didn't stop people previously - it is going to impede our ability to 20 hear from people who are here at the moment. I don't need to hear from you again at the moment, sir. We are going to come back and ask questions of you if we've got them.
MR HAMILTON: You're okay now then? Thank you. 25 MR SHAW: Okay?
MR HAMILTON: Yes, thank you.
30 MR SHAW: Thank you. All right, we'll break for quarter of an hour.
ADJOURNED [3.37 pm]
RESUMED [3.55 pm] 35 MR SHAW: In a moment, Mr Hamilton.
Look, I understand there's some people who were a little discombobulated by what I had to say but I'm going to say it again 40 because I think it's really important that people understand what my problem was.
We're here to get information we have no difficulty whatsoever with people reiterating or, for want of a better word, sending us the same 45 message in respect of those things people think are important and that should have been clear in terms of what we heard from Mr Malthus, Mr Boyd, the Reserve Society, where precisely the same message was being given but it was, all of it, new material and separately
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presented. My difficulty was and is and will be reaffirmed, where all we have essentially is a recitation of evidence that has been directly given to us, sometimes in the last couple of days, sometimes a week or so ago and it's just simply repeated to us having been drawn from 5 the transcripts, doesn't help and it makes it really, really difficult for us. I understand that there's an element of summary that people wish to engage in and they wish to close off and complete, for want of a better word, their case.
10 But that's a luxury which frankly we can't afford in the sense that there is limited time and our task is to get information. So it's not trying to shut off people's options at all but it is to ensure that we're using the time as we're required to do in order to get information that will assist us in the assessment of the effects of the proposal. 15 So I didn't set out to upset people. If I did -- in fact I'm not going to say that "if I did I apologise", because those are weasel words and because we're going to be taking the same view in respect of, as I say, the recitation of these things. We've had some really high quality 20 material in front of us today. I'm keen to hear more of that I really am. And Mr Hamilton, sorry you were the one who was there at the time. But again, we had a high quality submission from you and it's those things we need to concentrate on.
25 So, where are we now? Mr Hamilton, I think there are some questions for you.
MR HAMILTON: Thank you.
30 MR COATES: Tēnā koe, Malibu.
MR HAMILTON: Tēnā koe, Gerry.
MR COATES: I need to declare that Mr Hamilton and I are both members of the Te 35 Ngaru Roa ā Maui committee which advises the EPA on hazardous substances and we have an acquaintanceship, so I put that out in the open.
I just wanted to go back to your submission and ask you, you talked 40 about a bond and said that the applicant had insurance cover but you were suggesting that possibly a bond might be a better way of approaching liability issues.
MR HAMILTON: Well I personally do because I did that in the first TTR hearing and I 45 realised that without putting a bond in place and the way that the adaptive management process goes, there is, as I've said in the submission, very limited -- anything is limited about them as, "Stop, don't do any more". It's not like what was advised it was a small five-
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year term and so the bond, a substantial bond is by way of an actual fact environmental compensation and unless the EPA is holding that money these people can walk away on us.
5 There have been other applicants who have come in, they've mined the country, done different things, had tailings damns that failed and so on and walked away from the responsibility. And the Act is very clear, is that it allows for a bond to be set in place and I still stand by that. 10 [4.00 pm]
MR COATES: Thank you, that's very clear. So, no further questions for you.
15 MR SHAW: Ms McGarry?
MS MCGARRY: Just to pick up on that, Mr Hamilton. You've said that quite separate to and, in fact, as well as the public liability insurance?
20 MR HAMILTON: Yes. The public liability insurance isn't robust enough and it doesn't really -- because I can hear different questions coming from this Committee that in actual fact keeps talking about if we give consent and so on like that, which is appropriate, I'm not saying it's totally inappropriate. I'm saying that if it is giving consent on the basis that 25 I've read the document so far, and if it is giving consent based on this inadequate monitoring programme and this, "Please, let's give us a chance to get approval, then mine and then monitor" where the places aren't really needed where it's monitoring, it's not capturing any information, and then with shoddy parameters that was identified 30 partly by the EPA issues report, I believe we're in some real strife personally.
MS MCGARRY: Thank you, and I just want to reiterate again that this constantly going back to conditions, I know it's irritating for submitters, but it is no 35 indication of any predetermination on this side of the table. But this is it, this is our only opportunity to explore these matters.
MR HAMILTON: Yes.
40 MS MCGARRY: So I hope everybody understands that there's certainly no predetermination.
You've raised another issue that's come through submissions and through the expert conferencing and it's the using turbidity as a 45 surrogate for SSC.
MR HAMILTON: Yes.
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MS MCGARRY: I just want to reassure you that that is forefront of my mind. It's not something there's been a lot of discussion on, not because it's been missed but I think that's discussion for the conditions conferencing that will come after we've heard all the evidence. So I just want to 5 reassure you that we've certainly got that issue, so thank you for bringing it to our attention again. Have you got a view on it?
MR HAMILTON: Yes, I have. I believe it's -- in the situation where, like one of the other witnesses today has stated, is that if this was done in the RMA 10 context, when we're dealing on land, that has been pretty well defined and the applicant don't dare, wouldn't dare come to an RMA hearing and actually have such small, wide parameters that are actually meaningless in its content with regards to how it measures and what to measure. So that's why I used the EPA's own Key Issues report to 15 say, "Hello, there's some real strife here". So I have strife with the fact that the applicant has come completely -- the application is actually premature again. They've only done a little bit of information with regards to the HRW and they're already rejigging their conditions. And so when they can't even get the basic 20 parameters on what to measure, I find they're failing in their duty to actually fulfil the application requirements. That's my view.
MS MCGARRY: Thank you, sir.
25 MR THOMPSON: No questions, thanks.
MR SHAW: And nothing from me. Thank you, Mr Hamilton.
MR HAMILTON: Thank you. Thanks to the Committee. 30 MR SHAW: Mr Hugh Russell. Is Mr Russell no longer with us?
MS MCGARRY: I think he wasn't here before.
35 MR SHAW: Mr John Milnes. Welcome, Mr Milnes.
[4.05 pm]
MR MILNES: Thank you. I think this is quite an important opportunity to bring up 40 some things that really don't seem to be covered in the law and if nothing else it's a chance to make him a little bit more explicit. To me there's an incredibly large elephant in the room which is being ignored, despite the smell and the stomping, and that's climate change. And I know it's not covered in the law but it damn well 45 should be. Everything we do, every change we make to the environment, chasing up resources, rarely decide whether we need them or not, the economic bogey of, "We must have these resources, we must have growth" and all of them are driving us faster and faster
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towards a climate change that we seem to be intent on ignoring. Particularly if we're a business, particularly if you're an oil company, and even the great and glorious Donald Trump doesn't believe in climate change. So, we really are in the doo-doo that the elephant's 5 leaving.
Currently the planet is suffering from the effects of excessive extraction of resources: minerals, oil and water. There are estimates that we're using resources at a rate that to be sustainable would 10 require another two planet Earths for us to carry on. People only think of growth, which means more people, which means more demand on resources and that's when it comes to it is quite an incredibly destructive, self-destructive, approach to where we're going. We should be conserving resources and recycling a hell of a 15 lot more, particularly steel. Now, as I understand it at the moment, there is an oversupply of steel in the world to the tune of about 400 million tonnes a year. And so, how can it be economic to even mine this resource, just for a moment forgetting all the, what I feel, quite likely environmental concerns that have been raised and have been 20 quite explicit today.
I once lived where there was an old farmhouse, it was certainly worse for wear but still used by hunters for shelter and it did have a fireplace and had been made reasonably cosy by a possum hunter who was 25 living there for a period of time. And he would welcome hunters to share the space until one group of hunters started pulling the wallboards off to put in the fire despite the fact that there was firewood outside. And it didn't take long until his mates pointed out the obvious, that just because he wasn't there for the long-term, it was 30 not okay to destroy something that someone else called home just to save himself a trip outside.
To me, it seems the TTR, who aren't even a New Zealand company, we don't really know how much care they have for New Zealand and 35 our resources. They seem to be pretty intent on pulling the walls off and burning the bloody lot of it.
That brings us to the resources. There have been many reassurances that there is little sea life in the mined area but my suspicions were 40 that there was a lot more, and this afternoon some of the submissions, it's been obvious that there's a damn sight more out there than was talked about. The TTR found one sponge. It must be incredibly busy looking after that area of ocean compared to the many that were shown to us today, if there is only one. It's too easy to dismiss an area 45 as devoid of life if we don't properly explore it, if we can't see it. When you're on the ocean all you see is waves and suchlike and it takes quite a bit to find out what's really going on underneath but it's
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part of a huge interconnected ecosystem and I think we have the ability, or we don't have the ability to completely understand it.
[4.10 pm] 5 My background was in science and I carry on having quite an interest in the natural world in particular because it's what feeds us, it's what nurtures us, what gives us something to appreciate and I know that if we don't care for it, the smallest thing -- I remember somebody 10 talking about the snails that would disappear when they were doing some coal mining down south and it's he said, "It's only -- it's just a snail". How do we know how important any particular creature that goes extinct, whether it's the Māui's dolphin or whether it's some rare insect we've hardly ever seen, it may be critical to our long-term 15 survival.
One of the issues that really -- well, it doesn't surprise me anymore. Whenever there is some major project put forward like this one here, there is always the talk of jobs. The TTR put out an advertisement in 20 October of last year about the myths, saying there was promise of over 1,600 jobs including 700 regionally but no mention of the type of jobs: cleaners? Or more importantly, for how long: for the life of the project or for a few years, months or days? Whether they were, the jobs were mostly going to be taken by people from overseas 25 because of the expertise required. It was so non-specific as to be meaningless and it sounds a bit like an alternative truth to me.
What's very important when it comes to resources is whether the loss of potential resources: fisheries, coastline and marine life, is worth it 30 for the promise of jobs and some proposed return to our economy but I doubt that it's anything like what's promised. And they've not even given us a ballpark figure of what those will be: jobs or return to the country. The dangling of economic returns has a feeling of gold fever about it but when it comes down to it these returns will finish when 35 the dredging finishes, whereas the sustainable returns from a sensibly managed ocean can continue indefinitely and we need to return to looking after our ocean.
It struck me when I was looking at the images from the ocean floor 40 there that in fact if they were to turn the area wanted -- required by TTR into a marine reserve we would actually be much better off in the longer term, not just 35 years, hundreds of years if we looked after it properly. Ultimately the ocean belongs to us all, not just people who live near it, but the sea life that depends on an environment more 45 interconnected than we yet understand. In the end whether the planet needs more iron ore, whether we will have more jobs, whether the ocean is worse or maybe better, a precautionary principle should prevail, certainly not profits for a majority overseas-owned company.
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Bill Mollison, who some of you may have heard of, he's a permaculturalist from Australia, and permaculture is about creating a system that carries on looking after itself with minimal inputs but 5 provides all the time for the people around it and the people who nurture it and just guide it in the right direction. But he made a statement that really struck me at the time, and it covers a lot of things that have happened in the last, particularly 100 years and more. He summed up the precautionary principle in his works on permaculture 10 with a truism. We have the ability to change the environment at a greater rate than we can understand the effects of that change. I think we're at serious risk of falling into that trap of changing the environment and only finding out afterwards the effects of what has happened. 15 I strongly believe that this project is not a good idea because it's not needed, it is not wise, it's not economical, it's not sustainable and by the turnout opposed to it, not wanted by the people who are really affected by it, the local people in Taranaki and Whanganui area in 20 particular. Basically that's where I come from. For me it's from the heart. I'm trying to speak for my grandson who's the future. I'll be gone when the shit hits the fan whether it be from an elephant or TTR. Thank you.
25 [4.15 pm]
MR SHAW: Mr Thompson.
MR THOMPSON: No questions, thanks. 30 MR SHAW: Ms McGarry?
MS MCGARRY: No, I'd just like to thank you for your time in coming to speak to us today. Obviously what you've said is a pretty high level and thank 35 you.
MR MILNES: Thank you.
MR SHAW: Mr Coates. 40 MR COATES: Thank you. I've noted again your emphasis on the precautionary principle and we're well aware of that, so that is one thing I'll be mindful of. Thank you.
45 MR SHAW: Last time I sat on a hearing such as this in New Plymouth, exactly the same comment was made about what constituted the elephant in the room. But we're faced with the law as it's written.
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MR MILNES: I know it's the law but maybe they'll -- it's about time they started to think seriously about it because this island's going to be no damn good to us in terms of solving the climate change problem. It's also apparent we're using one huge amount of energy and oil just to run it. 5 MR SHAW: All right, thank you, Mr Milnes.
MR MILNES: Okay, thank you.
10 MR SHAW: Mr and Mrs Hart, I presume it is, Raglan Sport Fishing Club.
MRS HART: I don't know how Mr Hart got involved in this but --
MR SHAW: Well I can't answer that question either. 15 MRS HART: No.
MR SHAW: But we have on our table Sheryl and John Hart.
20 MRS HART: Yes, but there -- but no Mr Hart, no.
MR SHAW: No Mr Hart?
MRS HART: No. Well, there is but he's at home working. 25 MR SHAW: Do I take from that that where he's expected to be?
MRS HART: Yes.
30 MR SHAW: I thought so.
MRS HART: Yes.
MR SHAW: Well, welcome, Mrs Hart. 35 MRS HART: Thank you, sir. Committee and Mr Chair. Raglan Sport Fishing Club: yes, we're miles away from Pātea but we all feel the effects of what is going to happen at Pātea on the entirety of the west coast. Yes, I'm Secretary of the Raglan Sport Fishing Club, I'm also Vice- 40 President of the New Zealand Recreational Fishing Council and I also sit on the In-shore Working Group within the MPI process. My personal dream was to see a fisher rebuilding on the west coast and I have lived to see that happening on the west coast and I don't want to see that situation jeopardised by anything that is unknown, even 45 possibly unknown. We have 600 members in our club we're growing exponentially and the thing about clubs is that only 10 per cent of all anglers actually belong to a club, so by default fishing clubs get to represent the entire recreational fishing sector within their areas.
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We are very much against the proposal by TTR. I don't see any of the science that should be sustained within anything that they've put forward. I read somewhere that they said it was a dead zone. New 5 Zealand is actually one of the few places in the world where more species of fish are being discovered every day than anywhere else in the world. I had the joy of meeting a Dr Clive Roberts from Te Papa who came to New Zealand on the express wish of wanting to name a fish after himself. Now, he's gone so far down his family list he 10 actually rang me the other day and said did I want one. So we are discovering fish at a rate of knots that's unknown in the rest of the world. In that Pātea block, it might not contain the species of fish that we already know about but it's so under-investigated that the fish are probably there waiting to be discovered. We've also seen some 15 awesome photos from the dive club down there that life exists.
[4.20 pm]
Now juvenile fish need soft corals and low reef and seaweed to 20 actually progress from being juvenile fish to being adult fish and those soft corals are very, very susceptible to sedimentation, as has already been talked about. I don't want to see this rebuild that we've had in this fishery jeopardised. The economic value from the fishery will outweigh by far anything that we make out of seabed mining. 25 We not only have a growing recreational fishery where you can go from anything from the sale of a boat, tackle, petrol, food and accommodation at various coastal places where these guys are going, we also have a very healthy commercial fishery that actually has employment and lots of flow-on effects. Why would we want to stop 30 that regrowth? We are so close to being at what they term maximum sustainable yield within this west coast fishery, primarily snapper 8, that anything that will slow that down, stop it just can't be credible.
I made some notes from previous things. You talked about the 35 sedimentation coming down the Whanganui River. That's an existing situation. Anything that we do in excess of that is what we should be worried about. When Captain Cook discovered New Zealand he travelled down the west coast of the North Island and he drew every harbour but he didn't actually enter any of them. He sat five nautical 40 miles offshore and measured sedimentation in the water, so natural sedimentation is actually something that's been around forever. It's the unnatural sedimentation that we need to be very, very careful of. Natural sedimentation contains nutrients which in the end actually feed fish. 45 You also talked about the poor old Pātea Dive Club having to become the observers for something that's not their concern. I hope that if you're going to put observers in to observe any effects of this they
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will be independent and paid for by the company, not the poor old Pātea Dive Club they're all volunteers.
West coast weather. What a place to start something that's 5 experimental in New Zealand. We lose people in boats a dime to the dozen. We just don't need to have the situation where these guys are going to be out there and it's just not acceptable.
I don't believe that this is a fisheries situation in the fact that we're 10 counting fish because that's MPI's job. Your job is to find out what the effects will be on the fishery with seabed mining.
The economic effects I've already talked about. The economic effects on recreational fishers who, at present, are able to go out and get 15 themselves a feed of fish, to have that even thought about being jeopardised is not even worth the consideration. And I'd like to talk about the timeframe of, if this goes ahead, the timeframe of the monitoring. It's got to be brought back to a very short period of time and it's got to be independent and professional because fair enough 20 the Pātea Dive Club, they're going to see the first effects of this happening but it's not their job to do the monitoring. Yes, that's about me. Thank you very much.
MR SHAW: Thank you very much. Mr Thompson? 25 MRS HART: No, Sheryl Hart.
MR SHAW: No, I'm asking Mr Thompson if he --
30 [4.25 pm]
MRS HART: Sorry. Just one more thing. Just as I left home today I scrapped through my computer and found a study by a guy called H Cumming and N A Herbert and it's on the gill structural change in response to 35 turbidity has harmful effects of the sedimentation induced turbidity on juvenile fish in estuaries. Now this was a study done in the Kaipara Harbour and, sorry, it wasn't by them it was by M L Lowe, Morrison and R B Taylor. Now I only managed to get this today so I haven't got any copies for you but I'm sure it's easily found. But they're 40 finding deformation in snapper, in the gill structure of snapper in the Kaipara from the seabed mining in the Kaipara Harbour for sand. So, it is going to affect our fish. Is it something the fish can still live with? I don't know but like I said before it's all the question marks and the unknowns that is the scary situation. Thank you. 45 MR SHAW: Okay now?
MRS HART: Yes.
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MR SHAW: Mr Thompson.
MR THOMPSON: Thanks, Mrs Hart. Thanks very much for your very forthright 5 presentation delivered with a lot of passion. I just want to question about monitoring. You said the duration, I presume you meant the interval between subsequent measures, so we close up the timeframe so we've got a better chance of measuring any slight change or impact? 10 MRS HART: Yes, absolutely.
MR THOMPSON: What would you think would be an appropriate duration?
15 MRS HART: Well, to start with, on the initial situation I think it should almost be six-monthly and then if you're finding no ill effects you can put it out to a couple of years. But initially I think, because it's such an unknown quantity in New Zealand, you've got to have your monitoring very, very close. And what are you going to do when you 20 actually find it's going pear-shaped? I think you need to work that one out as well because anyone and everyone in this room who's got anything to do with the sea knows this isn't going to be a pretty picture it's going to be going downhill.
25 MR THOMPSON: Thank you. I think you've probably heard today that some of the submissions have suggested that we may find it difficult to measure the impact of mining because of other things moving about at the same time and that's a real issue. But conditions would be, in the event that things are adverse, outside of scale, then the mining would 30 stop. But thanks very much.
MRS HART: Thank you.
MS MCGARRY: Thank you and I hope you took the offer of having a Sheryl fish or a 35 Hart fish named after yourself, it sounds good.
MRS HART: No because he only wanted little rock fish and I didn't see myself being there.
40 MS MCGARRY: You're looking for something a bit more substantial.
MRS HART: I want something big, yes.
MS MCGARRY: Yes, most of the big ones have been found. 45 MRS HART: Yes.
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MS MCGARRY: Just going back to your submission, just a couple of quick points I want to clarify. When you talked about seabed mining in other parts of the world being suspended until more is known. Is there an example there? 5 MRS HART: Indonesia.
MS MCGARRY: Indonesia?
10 MRS HART: And India. I mean those are two very poor countries and they've already decided it's not a go.
MS MCGARRY: Thank you.
15 MRS HART: I don't think we've got starving children -- well, sorry, we do have some starving children but it's not as prolific as it is in those two countries.
MS MCGARRY: You've talked about submarine fresh water springs and I think it's not 20 something there's been much focus on in the hearing. You've said these have been --
MRS HART: Sixty years.
25 MS MCGARRY: -- identified in locations marked. Where can we access that information?
MRS HART: The underwater springs stuff was an example of what happens. It took 60 years for the bad stuff at Tākaka to get into the subterranean 30 water so therefore it's going to take another 60 years to fix it. And that's what I'm saying, is out there it's going to take 60 years probably to actually see, possibly see any bad effects. Like when our houses start falling into the ocean because the sand that was in that hole's come from somewhere else. That's what I'm talking about. How do 35 you mitigate something that you're probably not going to see for quite a long time?
[4.30 pm]
40 MS MCGARRY: I've just got one other question that really relates to what we heard from Mr Malthus before. I'm not sure if you were here. He showed us that from his anecdotal notebook diarying over the years that he's seen a decline in the blue cod and the snapper and the crayfish fishery and you're telling us that you're seeing an increase in the -- 45 MRS HART: Crayfish and snapper.
MS MCGARRY: I just wondered --
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MRS HART: I do not know anything about the blue cod 8 area which is this area here, I'm sorry.
5 MS MCGARRY: I just want to understand, in your area, over what kind of time period are you seeing the increase --
MRS HART: The rebuild?
10 MS MCGARRY: Yes.
MRS HART: I moved to Raglan in 1983 and the fishery was in a bit of a sad situation. I live there now, it's 2017, and anyone who can't get a feed of crays or a feed of snapper off Raglan really should stay in town. 15 MS MCGARRY: And any idea in that --
MRS HART: But that's an MPI situation that's not something --
20 MS MCGARRY: I understand that, yes.
MRS HART: Yes.
MS MCGARRY: You believe that's directly as a result of managing catches and 25 sustainable yields.
MRS HART: Yes, absolutely.
MS MCGARRY: And any idea at what point in time in that period things turned around 30 in your view?
MRS HART: The introduction of the quota management system.
MS MCGARRY: Yes, it was that direct in your view? 35 MRS HART: Yes. I mean it didn't happen overnight it has been gradually but it has been gradually on the up since the introduction of the quota management system, yes.
40 MS MCGARRY: Yes. Thank you.
MR COATES: Mrs Hart, tēnā koe. Welcome to New Plymouth and thank you for driving all this way to submit to us.
45 MRS HART: Yes.
MR COATES: I just wondered, are there parallels in your view between the South Taranaki Bight and Raglan; is that what stimulated you to make a
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submission or is it a general feeling of wanting to keep the oceans healthy?
MRS HART: I suppose to stick together. We all stick together, the west coast stick 5 together. So that's why I'm here, I'm here to support my friends who fish out here.
MR COATES: So you're all of one mind in the sport fishing community?
10 MRS HART: Yes.
MR COATES: Thank you.
MRS HART: Or the fishing community. 15 MR COATES: Fishing community.
MRS HART: Yes.
20 MR COATES: Thank you.
MR SHAW: Just one question from me, Mrs Hart. Did I understand you to say that seabed mining in general or absolutely had been suspended in both India and Indonesia? 25 MRS HART: I was under that impression I think. So, if I'm proved wrong well --
MR SHAW: No, I just wanted to understand --
30 MRS HART: -- I will be better informed and I will change my mind.
MR SHAW: I just wanted to understand whether you were talking about specific projects or the practice in its entirety.
35 MRS HART: No, it was my understanding that they had been suspended but I may well be wrong.
MR SHAW: Okay, thank you. Alessandra Keighley or Keighley.
40 MS KEIGHLEY: (off mic comment)
MR SHAW: Just you? Okay, excellent.
MS KEIGHLEY: When do we press go, is it now? 45 MR SHAW: As soon as you're ready to start.
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MS KEIGHLEY: All right. Well, I'll tell you what -- oops, I made it 15 it's got to be 10, doesn't it? There we go. Kia ora tātou katoa, hello everybody, welcome. I bet you've heard a lot of talk so far. I live with a kind of thing called dysnomia and I thought I was speaking on Thursday but I 5 heard it was right here right now so it's going to be what it's going to be. Kia ora tātou. Thank you. How close do you talk to this one? Is that too loud? Is that okay?
(off mic comment) 10 MS KEIGHLEY: Okay. Hello, hello, hello. I spoke the last time that the EPA were here and in the morning I just came down and a kuia from Parihaka woke up that morning and thought, "I need to go and be at the EPA hearings, I don't know why". And we met in the hallway there and 15 she karanga'd me in and I spoke. I was very, very nervous but all of what I said is on record from the last time, the other EPA. Because I don't know if you guys are the same people I think you're all new now. So all of that's already on the record and you might think how is that possible that you get up in the morning and a kuia just knows she 20 has to be there. But you see that's the magic and the mystery of all of the unseen things.
[4.35 pm]
25 We all know in our waters that those are real but we pretend from this kind of cerebral place from here up that they don't exist. Now, my kuia's husband has died since then I wouldn't ask her to come out again. My own husband was here that day and he's also passed on so I can't ask him to come again but he's here. And that's the case, time 30 passes and the time that's going to be passed for the effects of the decision you guys are going to make is going to stand for our children and their children and their children; and that's the truth of it. Essentially we're all made of water, we know that water is life. There's only 3 centimetres of skin basically between your waters and 35 my waters.
I'm not going to talk science to you, you've heard lots of that. I'm not going to talk much on the economics but a little bit. I wonder if you feel anything odd about listening to this submission inside of a hotel 40 with air-conditioning. I have to ask you, how many of the people who bussed up here from Pātea were sleeping in a hotel with air- conditioning and a la carte menus. Why can't we hear seabirds? Why aren't we somewhere where we're actually among the people who'll be most affected and immediately affected by the decision you're about 45 to take?
I wonder if you don't feel like you're actually in some kind of a charade because we're always told to respect the process and we do,
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and we're told, "Submit", "Make your submission". I only bow my head to a mountain. That's my mountain and it's our mountain ground up that's being talked about so greedily as ironsand resource. And when there's a process that we're here to respect and I acknowledge 5 the mana of each and every one of you, you're here for a good purpose you've been chosen. But I think Solomon wouldn't like your job. How is it fair that in the paper on the Monday that gets published? Look at this, "Ministry backs seabed plan". Monday. What the hey? We all know that we've reached a time and a place 10 where people are going to stand up for what matters to them.
I'm not sure if you're aware but you are in the middle of a place that is acknowledged world-wide for one thing and this is what I want to bring to you today. Taranaki people are known throughout the world 15 for this. The Martin Luther King Foundation have come and laid down gifts for this. The Akita Foundation have come and given their acknowledgement of it. The Mahatma Gandhi family and Foundation have come and laid down their acknowledgement of our leadership. This is our love, our tremendous love for our human being, our fellow 20 man and our ability to passively resist. I bring that love to you here today and I lay it in front of you and it's an inexhaustable resource. It can't be mined out, it can't be polluted and there's one thing we will all stand for forever, āke, ake, ake.
25 And that kuia of Parihaka, I can feel her right now with her hand in the centre of my back because I'm nothing. But what's going on here, this is a really big thing, maybe five years, ten years, twenty years ago you could have done it but you know and I know this is part of an economy that is not only dying it is dead. There's a new economy 30 afoot in the world and everybody knows it. We're sitting in this room pretending we're divorced from it but we're not and water is life. The people are beginning to wake up to it and if we're going to talk just economics, which is like take out your guts, take out your heart just speak with your head, what is the value to a planet whose oceans are 35 dying of the biggest creature on God's earth in our waters, what is that to the economy of Taranaki? What is that to the employment of Taranaki? What is that to the inspiration for our children of a future for us all that we can all uphold, linked with the mana of Parihaka?
40 You know Gandhi, I don't have to say any other names, you know who that guy is. We all know that. Now, that's what we have here. Now, you know what to do and I really do feel that Solomon would be the best one to inform you because your names will be written and the songs will be sung with your names in them from here on in and 45 you have to make that choice.
[4.40 pm]
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I think I've already finished actually. So, I thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you and I thank you, to all of our people, for being willing to stand up for what you believe in. And all I can say to Trans-Tasman Resources and that lady, Zhang, who's one of 5 the 400 richest people in the world -- in China, sorry, who we haven't met yet but she's the one without a photo on the board of the Trans- Tasman Resources. I can just tell you from our guts, our heart, our soul, we will resist, we will resist, we will resist. Thank you.
10 MR SHAW: Excuse me. Do you want to answer any questions the Panel members may wish to ask?
MS KEIGHLEY: (off mic comment)
15 MR SHAW: I don't know yet we'll find out.
MS KEIGHLEY: All right, darling, shall I sit down for that?
MR SHAW: Why not? 20 MS KEIGHLEY: All right. Okay.
MR SHAW: Ms McGarry.
25 MS MCGARRY: I've got no questions for you but I'd like to thank you for coming and speaking to us today, thank you.
MS KEIGHLEY: Thank you, thank you.
30 MR SHAW: Mr Thompson.
MR THOMPSON: Yes, thank you too and no questions.
MS KEIGHLEY: Thank you, sir. Thank you. 35 MR SHAW: Mr Coates.
MR COATES: I applaud you for your passion.
40 MR SHAW: Thank you, sir.
MR COATES: But I won't clap because my Chair would be very upset.
MS KEIGHLEY: I'm supposed to sing. I'm supposed to sing to you now because I did 45 that and I still haven't got anything but what song would we sing after that?
(singing)
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MR SHAW: Thank you.
MR COATES: Thank you very much. 5 MR SHAW: I think that one probably does deserve it.
(applause)
10 MR SHAW: All right, and now we are due to hear from Raukura Waitai.
MS WAITAI: I'll just grab another seat. Tēnā tātou katoa.
(Māori content) 15 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Acknowledgements to you around the table, acknowledgements also to those who are assembled here and to Matua te tapu who stands lofty above us.
20 MS WAITAI: (Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: My mountain is Papanui, Kai Iwi is my river. It is said that there are two of me. I'm of Rauru and of Awa, the river. I am the Tamareheroto clan. 25 MS WAITAI: So, my name is Raukura Waitai and it has been a long day and we have travelled a fair distance like many others to be here. So, and having heard the korero today I do realise that a good deal of my korero is going to be about reiterating some of the korero that has 30 come out today. And I think we've put our lives aside for at least a couple of days and hopefully just doing that will be of use to the Committee and not so much as a hindrance.
So, I'm a mother. I have five children and five grandchildren. I live 35 in Kai Iwi and our people down there, we have three marae down there: Taipake, Kai Iwi and Te Aroha, and our people are coastal people. We have a tribal estate that runs from the mouth of the Whanganui River to the mouth of the Pātea River but our sub-tribal estate goes from the mouth of the Whanganui River to the Okehu 40 Stream.
[4.45 pm]
Now, it might seem that we're a bit south to be thinking that we have 45 a say in this application but the fact is that that plume that was seen actually drifts right into our rohe our moana.
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Yes, and so that's really why I'm here today, is to address that and to just let the Committee know that I was here last time speaking to the previous DMC and it was my promise to myself that if I had to come back again I would really try hard not to read from my submission. 5 So, I've written a few notes just to guide me along the way in case I forget. I suppose in a weird kind of sense we can see some positivity in that this horrible process has meant that we've had to grow some environmentalists amongst ourselves and grow the awareness of the issues that we're facing. 10 So, in my submission I did make reference to -- I wanted to highlight our existing interests and I only do that because I'm actually trying to be a bit clever. Knowing that the EPA says that the existing interests have to be considered as well as tangata whenua values. I'm aware 15 that yesterday a number of the tangata whenua covered our world- view in depth and they did it really well, I wasn't here and I'm not aware whether they spoke about values but I'm pretty sure the whole korero enveloped those things. So, if anything, I just ask that those values are given some sort of prominence, some sort of equality in the 20 decisions that you are tasked with as well as our existing rights.
So our rights are ancient rights, as were outlined yesterday and this morning. They're ancestral, they're customary. The ocean is our church, it is our food source, it is our recreation ground, it is where 25 we go for healing. And we recognise that it's not just about us as tangata whenua it's about everybody that has the privilege near the coast, and, as Mr Milnes pointed out, even those people that don't live by the ocean it's also theirs and it's for all of us. And it's not just about today it's most certainly about tomorrow and 100, 1,000 years 30 from now.
And you will be aware that article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi did promise tangata whenua that our fisheries and many other things would be protected and so that is an expectation, whether it be 35 apparent in legislation, specifically noted in legislation or not, it is an expectation that those with the power, those with the influence will protect those taonga, those fisheries, those special places for us.
[4.50 pm] 40 In my submission I made mention of a number of the articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and I am aware that Mr Hamilton, yesterday, would have touched on the UNDRIP and I am aware that you guys do have the particular articles 45 listed and are quite capable of doing the reading in your own time.
The other existing interest I did want to bring attention to is the deed of settlement that was signed between the Crown representatives and
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Ngā Rauru Kītahi which, once again, I wasn't here yesterday but I'm pretty sure the Chairperson and the Kaiwhakahaere of Te Kaahui o Rauru would have spoken about. So, yes, we do understand that existing interests are to be considered, as I said. 5 Right, some of our concerns. A concern that arose to me this morning was that the DMC commented this morning that in accordance with legislation the extraction of minerals is permitted so long as it is managed. So my immediate response, and I realise you don't answer 10 questions, Mr Chair, but my response was how on earth does one propose to manage the destruction of mauri, the destruction of life force, the destruction of life. So, I actually thought that was quite a good question. If that in fact is something that needs to be considered then I would be interested in knowing the answer to that question. 15 Why are we so interested in mauri? Well, we have a saying down in Whanganui, "Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au" I am the river and the river is me. But the essence of that saying is that the health of the environment will be a direct reflection of my own health and so if the 20 mauri, if the life force of the sea, the moana, is compromised then it is ingrained within our world-view that so too will be our life force. Our life force will also be compromised. I take my hat off to all the technical and non-technical witnesses today that visually drew from the -- it was clear to see a positive response from the table. The ones 25 speaking about fish and things you could actually see but it is a concern that tangata whenua values and these world-views because they're so intangible perhaps and different that they're overlooked and not given the weighting that they deserve.
30 Listening to Dr Edwards this morning was quite refreshing, it certainly gave us all food for thought and I agree that it's not an easy one and it's not something that's going to be fixed, we're not going to get the solution just like that. But I certainly do encourage all of us to look through that light he was talking about; you could see something 35 really amazing through that light, yes.
[4.55 pm]
So, I'm very aware of trying not to repeat what other people have said 40 but we really are also concerned about the plume, the erosion, the cumulative effects, which we only know so much about. So I just want to enforce that as well; that message. And I suppose you can't create this great big thumping hole without nature wanting to try and replace it with something and so we're concerned that our coastline 45 will end up falling into that big hole and any other holes that are created.
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Yes, so we have rights, our children have rights, our grandchildren have rights; all our children have rights. And that's all we're doing today and I mihi to the very vibrant Alessandra from Parihaka – Cassandra – hei konei tonu – she’s gone. 5 Because although she was quite dramatical, we could relate to that message.
So, I'm going to also talk about - ask for the precautionary principle to 10 be adopted because where there is so much uncertainty about the activity, well we certainly as tangata whenua, we have no choice but to say -- to oppose. And we're hoping that the EPA does favour caution and environmental protection.
15 And that's probably all I want to say at the moment.
MR SHAW: Thank you very much and let me tell you, you didn't stray even faintly into the area that was going to get under skin. That was precisely what we expect to hear from people who are making 20 representations and submissions. It's not a question of repeating and identifying the same concerns that others have; that's exactly what we expect to happen. Where I had difficulty, was just simply we were faced with really a series of quotes of evidence that we'd already had from other people, which isn't the same thing at all. 25 And can I congratulate you on, I think, re-drawing our attention to something that we are going to struggle with. And you expressed very clearly something that I think is going to be a challenge. How do we balance the extraction of sand and the extraction of Māori? 30 And this is not going to be easy and I'd be astonished if it was an exercise that would be completed at this hearing. It's an exercise I think, that's going to be decades in the resolution by this country. Whether it is ironsands mining or any one of a number of other things. 35 So for me, thank you. I don't have questions but my colleagues very well may do. Mr Thompson?
[5.00 pm] 40 MR THOMPSON: Mrs Waitai, congratulations; I think you've displayed an empathy for the issues you're trying to present to us and you presented them with feeling, compassion, and I think with a great deal of modesty. You've raised the issue of Māori again and it's a concept that we are 45 struggling with, but I think we're coming closer to an understanding of what it means to you people. And it's going to challenge us as we go through the rest of the hearing. So thanks very much.
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MS McGARRY: Thank you. I'd just like to thank you for your time in coming to see us. We do appreciate that you've come a long way and made the effort to be here. So thank you for that. And you didn't need your notes. 5 MR SHAW: Mr Coates?
MR COATES: Tēnā koe. Kia ora koutou. I just noticed you mentioned that your children have rights, that we all have rights. We also have obligations 10 but it doesn't mean that Parliament, through an act of Parliament, have given the applicant rights as well. They have rights to apply for a mining consent and rights to apply for a discharge consent and that's our job is to decide how to balance those rights. And one of the ways that we do it is to look at and hear what you're saying. You also 15 mentioned that you hope that we are aware of the values that come from your iwi. My tribe has expressly stated what its Māori values are. Values such as manaakitanga, tohungatanga and those sorts of things. So I'm sure you have a similar set of whakataukī or values in yours. And I just applaud you for coming down here and making a 20 heartfelt statement to us. Thank you.
MS WAITAI: Thank you.
MR SHAW: And I'll just make the observation that these two little girls who have 25 behaved really pretty well over a long, long day or two days. It's of no consequence I'm sure to those who are responsible for their good behaviour but I think it is significant. Thank you. Thank you all.
Are we getting another submission now? 30 FEMALE SPEAKER: (off mic comment)
MR SHAW: Another representation?
35 FEMALE SPEAKER: (off mic comment)
MR SHAW: I'm sorry?
FEMALE SPEAKER: (off mic comment) 40 MR SHAW: Yes, I'm just wanting to know who we've got, that's all.
MS TANGAROA: Who's up next?
45 MR DAVIS: You, Tanea.
MS TANGAROA: Is it? Right, okay.
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(Māori content)
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Acknowledgements to you, matua te tapu. Acknowledgements also to you, Tangaroa of the ocean. The great 5 river flows seaward from the majestic gathering of the mountains to the marine domain of Tangaroa. I am the river, the river is me.
MS TANGAROA: (Māori content)
10 INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Who are you?
MS TANGAROA: Tanea Tangaroa. That’s the sound of the unborn, yet to make their presence in this realm. And we've been blessed over the last two days, I would say blessed, to have mokopuna here with us to 15 experience and to have in their memory of this two days with their nan and their koro, with their nannies and koro coming here to make a stand for them.
[5.05 pm] 20 I say, "Ko wai koe" because we are no different from each other. Today I come to you with very little on my submission, as I generally do when I do come into hearings a lot of the time. It comes on the moment. And I've been to a few hearings now and I think the last 25 time I encountered some of this panel was over the road at the OMV hearing. And it just seems to go on and on and on. So that's the level of kaitiakatanga that we're having to be doing every day. Every day, 24/7, when we're not on our whenua doing the mahi, taking care of our tamariki and our mokopuna. 30 Today I am representing those who are yet to be born, our mokopuna. And I'm also representing our mokopuna and tamariki, who are not here today but who did file submissions and they have asked me to come here and to speak on behalf of them. 35 : In my own submission, I have the words “ko wai koe”, which is “who are you?” This is what they also ask, "Nan, who are they? Who are these people? Who are they? Who are you talking to? Who are you going to be sitting down and talking to? Who are these people that 40 make these decisions? Who are the people who are coming in and wanting to do this to our taonga? Who are they?" And in our mātauranga, we are told that we are all one. And I have to tell them that the people who are doing this are extensions of ourselves and they get very sad about that. They get sad to think that extensions of 45 themselves are allowing the very taonga that has nurtured our tupuna and ourselves, and our next several generations hopefully will be compromised, or will be desecrated as we have seen with so many of our taonga.
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Our children cry as I cry for them. They want to know that if this happens, will their ripo be destroyed as it nearly was when economics came in and decided to turn a historical wetland into a landfill. When 5 Vector Todd decided to put a pipeline going from Kapuni all the way down through that ripo, through that wetland and through our awa.
Now, they have lived with that. Our tamariki live with that every day whenever they go out and play at Kokohuia, that is what they see, 10 every day. But they're in there cleaning it up because nobody else would. Nobody else wanted to go in there and mihi and acknowledge the very little water that was left in there after it was destroyed and devastated by good economics. And this is why our children say, "Ko wai koe, who are those people, Nan? Who are they that want to do 15 this to our moana?" And I have to say to them, "They are extensions of ourselves, because they are us". And they cry.
[5.10 pm]
20 So every day we are on our ripo, on our wetlands and we are acknowledging and activating the mauri that was devastated and desecrated through good economics and through development. And because of that very one thing, we're nobody else. Everybody else gave up because they could see it was contaminated, it was leaching. 25 The air is no good to breathe. The colour of the water glows. It doesn't glow like a reflection of the sky it glows like rainbow colours. It glows like luminant blue that you know isn't the reflection of the sky.
30 We've had to learn how to take pH tests of our waterways just so we know that our kids are not going to get hakihaki’s. That if they touch the water or walk through there, they're not going to come out with these big acid blobs all over their skin. And they say, "Nan, what will happen to our ripo now that we are restoring them and bringing them 35 back when nobody else cared for them? What will happen to them if the seabed mining goes just off our coast?" Because you see, they hear that it's in Pātea. But our kids look out from Kokohuia and they see that. They can see Kaihau o Kupe. They see their coast Te Tai Hauāuru right up. They can see Koro Matua Te Tapu from 40 Kokohuia. They stand there and they are no different from where their relations are in Ngā Rauru or Ngāti Ruanui or here, right here. Because they're extensions. We're all one. It's just an extension of themselves, their tūpuna. They have the same whakapapa.
45 They worry, they fret and it plays on their hinengaro. And what they have to go through now on their tinana is not good, because of the developments that were so good, that were meant to bring in benefits and were meant to bring in good things for our community. But it
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benefited some. It didn't benefit our kids, our mokopuna, who were in the area of where that was happening. And now they hear that the port of Whanganui could be used to service these people over here for their venture; their application. And that it was -- at the time people 5 said, "Where are did you hear that from?" These kids aren't silly; they said, "We read it in the 10-year plan."
It was premeditated right back from the first application. And then when that went it's come up again. And our kids are having anxiety. 10 Now they've been told they can't swim in the area that they've been swimming in for years. This is our awa I'm talking about. They've been told they can't swim there and that if they're scene down there. They will be escorted away by police. So now what happens? Police come in. Then what happens? CYFS get involved. It's a vicious 15 circle and all because of economics and development.
Our kids worry and they say, "Who are these people? Ko wai koe? Who are they?" And again, all I can say is, "They are extensions of ourselves". 20 [5.15 pm]
Tomorrow, my kids will be wanting to know, "What happened, Nan? Have they allowed it? Can we go back and swim where we used to 25 swim? Is our port going to be turned into a great big yard of ships that will be coming in now and spilling their fuel? Draining out their water from the bailors trying to get over the sand bar? The water that we don't know how long it's been sitting in those boats for? Are they going to name the boat after Tangaroa like they've done with all the 30 other boats that desecrate and pillage our taonga and name them after our tūpuna?" These are questions that our children want to know. They want to know if their ripo will suffer from the effects, the wetlands. They are the frontline of rising seas. We're doing everything we can to save our wetlands. Is this going to affect our 35 wetlands all along the coast?
That's all we want to know because that's all we have left now in our little areas, which have been crowded by industry and pollution. That's our little forest, our little -- that's all we have left. Wetlands 40 that were turned into landfills and then said, "Here we are, you can have them back now. We don't need them anymore." And we've built them up and no way do our children want to see them go back to being pōuri and mamae because then that's where we have - that's what will happen to us. We get pōuri, depressed, and it plays up here 45 and we get children -- we're trying to save them from suicide as it is. We don't want them coming in to their school environment, their kura, when they look out their front door and they see what, out on their moana. When they look out on their awa and they see what, on
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their awa? When they look in their repo, their wetlands and they see what? That's not a good environment for our tamariki or our mokopuna and it's not a good environment for us, their leaders, who are trying every day to do everything we can to preserve and protect 5 that for future generations.
Nō reira, to our extended selves who are sitting there; kia kaha, kia māia, kia manawanui.
10 Our children - I can go back and say to them, "I have spoken to our extended selves and they have heard". Nō reira. Kia ora.
MR SHAW: Kia ora. Just for the record, just so that we know, because we run a transcript; we were just listening to Tanea Tangaroa? 15 MS TANGAROA: Yes.
MR SHAW: And we're now going to be listening to Ms Bullock; is that right?
20 MS BULLOCK: No, you can listen to Uncle first.
MR SHAW: Your name, sir?
MR DAVIS: Mita. 25 MR SHAW: Mita. Mita Davis. Yes. Thank you.
MR DAVIS: (Māori content)
30 [5.20 pm]
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: The river flows seaward from the mountain gathering to the marine domain of Tangaroa. I am the river, the river is me. I sneeze the breath of life. Acknowledgements to you, the commission and 35 also acknowledgements to the iwi who have gathered here; Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Ruanui and others, and to all who have assembled.
MR DAVIS: Ā tēnā tātou. Ko Mita Davis tōku ingoa. It's ironic that I sit here amongst our women of the awa and that is a good base at the basis of 40 many things that happen on our tupuna; on our awa tupua. And probably a closer connection to Papatūānuku as well. And this is what's happening as we see a destruction to mother earth and what's being proposed.
45 I come from people who gathered from our ancestors, grandparents and parents who have shown us the art of survival. How to grow food, how to gather food from our lakes, rivers and streams and also from the moana, the sea, and also the bush, from ngahere. We have
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also been taught how to ensure to have food for tomorrow; conservation.
The areas that I have described, our whānau, hapū and iwi, are all our 5 primary food sources. This, in my view, is our supermarket where we go should we feel hungry. Nurtured by natural elements of Rangi- nui, the Sky Father, or Papatūānuku, Earth Mother. And not to go down to the dairy at the corner or to Countdown. The pictures that were displayed, our coastal beauty; that's our supermarket. That's my 10 supermarket and has been my supermarket for 52 years, since I first learned how to dive and gather food at the age of 8. So I have a passion and I come from a recreational diver and fisherman perspective.
15 These are also gifts I have been able to teach our children at kōhanga reo to provide and to grow food for themselves and their families and their future generations. And many others that I still am able to teach these skills that have been handed down for many, many generations. And I acknowledge that. 20 I now look at the conditions of our supermarket, the declining number of food in our lakes; polluted. And our streams also polluted. Our rivers polluted. Various parts of the moana are also polluted and I have experienced and witnessed that. Not by natural disaster, but by 25 men; ourselves. Take a look at ourselves; what are we doing?
So I support previous speakers in the retention of our coastal areas. As I said, I have a passion of recreational diving. I've dived north, south, east or west of the country. Stewart Island to the far north of 30 Whangārei. I've seen there, the effects of dumping, of shipping and ballasts. Pollution into our waterways. We can only look back to what happened in Wellington; the amount of pollution in the harbour and it affected those that lived within the harbour, and there was a typhoid scare many, many years ago. It has since been cleaned up 35 because of the laws.
Same again with what happened in Bluff and the dumping of the ship ballasts; pollution into the harbour, which affected the quality of the kelp that was used by tangata whenua there and it impacted on their 40 traditional tete preserving methods.
[5.25 pm]
Other sea vegetation also and food source for fish and filter-feeding 45 animals also depleted, that are unable to be collected for human consumption. And it took years until such time that it was cleared to be able to be caught for human consumption.
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In 1990 in Invercargill I became involved with iwi and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries New Zealand in surveying of plant and shellfish numbers. Collating data from recreational fishing and diving groups, set down grids to monitor the growth of plant life, 5 habitats, species, the sea bed composition, marine mammals, crustaceans and shellfish.
So over the years people started to realise the dumping of pollution coming from the meat industry, the freezing works and how it was 10 affecting those particular species that people were surviving on. It took ten years or a ten-year period of monitoring before there was colour back into that coastal area, a beautiful area similar to what we've seen.
15 Stewart Island is untouched because they have reserves down there. It's magical, majestical at night just to go down and just observe the colour that comes out at night in the life-force.
So since limited to no ships in the Whanganui Harbour - now I'm 20 coming back up north - and the laws around household pollution and the pipeline which is now being redirected a few years back, there is a significant return of fish coming back up the Whanganui River within the 6 kilometre to 7 kilometre mark radius. People are now able to catch food that was once not only the highway for our people, but it 25 was also the life-force for our people and for our future generation. We have also witnessed the return of kahawai and snapper up that area, particular area of Whanganui River; not a lot, but they are returning.
30 So pollution is, I guess, my message and my experience throughout the many, many years that I have been able to dive all of that country. The extraction of excessive amounts of the iron from this particular area, I am concerned. For 17 years I have been able to also waitā our fishing group, comrades as well, family and it is as it is, the way it is. 35 The moment that you tutū around with Papatūānuku it will have a devastating effect on all of us that who live off the coast. You keep the pollution from the vessels and they're huge, absolutely huge. Those that will be directly and indirectly involved will interrupt, kill, prevent retention and the return of sea life in the immediate area, but 40 also what will effect with the plume and the sediment will also have an effect, not just in the immediate area but it will follow that coastal flow. And that will obviously affect only the west coastal areas at this stage.
45 [5.30 pm]
So my recreational fishermen divers are reliant, like myself, as a food source for our families and our future generations. Other benefits, I
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guess, is what has been repeated or reiterated today as a form of income. Well, I guess that's what some people see that as, but I have many years dived, gathered kai and have never sold anything because it's about me sharing it to my people, my families and those that can't 5 gather food.
(Māori content)
That is my submission in relation to opposing this particular venture, 10 the seabed mining, and if you take away the resource of a people that has acquired it as the people expected to survive, the survival and our children's future are this country's obligation and an investment that we will reap the rewards for everyone. Nō reira, tēnā koutou katoa.
15 MR SHAW: Now you, is it, Ms Bullock?
MS BULLOCK: Don't you have any questions?
MR DAVIS: Oh no, I'm quite fine with that. 20 MR SHAW: There seemed a certain finality.
MS BULLOCK: I don't know if this is going to reach, is that okay?
25 (Māori content)
I am also of Ngāti Ruanui and also of Ngāruahine Rangi, sorry, in Taranaki and Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi of Whanganui. I'm also of Irish and French descent and English Rose, my grandfather would say. 30 I gravely oppose this application. I sat and spoke to my submission back in Whanganui a few years ago in front of a different panel, and worked very hard within my community and collaborated with my tuākana to sit here, my elders, and also other interested groups like 35 KASM to get the message out that this is happening.
When this happened a few years ago, nobody was really that interested in it, however over time the interest has grown extensively. So I think when Phil came down to Whanganui several years ago he 40 was knocking on all the doors and no one really wanted to let him in. But once people started to realise actually the enormity of what the potential risks were, people started to listen. So when the second application came through, those channels of communications were very clear and they were very easy, and we started putting things on 45 Facebook and we started having information nights, and we started to create an awareness in our community.
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We expected maybe 5 or 20 people to arrive at one of the information nights that we had. The room was as big as this and we couldn't get enough seats in. That was the interest, the growth of the interest in our community and it wasn't just amongst Māori people, it was 5 amongst all residents of Whanganui.
When the Chronicle was alerted to the fact that we weren't allowed or acknowledged to speak at our own rohe it actually sparked the interest of other people that weren't particularly interested in this topic, 10 namely, Chester Borrows. He thought it was quite interesting as well that we weren't given the respect that we were warranted last time to talk in our mana whenua area.
[5.35 pm] 15 So I work full time, I'm a social worker, I'm a lead professional on the Children's Team. I also practise Rongoā Māori. And we also, all of us, work with Tourism Whanganui in some form or another with our iwi and also with tourists, showing them our beautiful awa. So for me 20 I had to take time off work, unpaid; I've had to travel up here; I couldn't bring my support people that I -- at the first hearing, which were my mokopuna; my son-in-law who is a fisherman, my children who have to attend school. It really concerns me that we were not given that respect to speak in an area that is so … you are talking 25 about the area that is going to be afflicted, so to me it's not a very good sign; it doesn't give me very good confidence in the process, which is one of the things that I alluded to in my application, was I don't have the confidence that the current regulatory processes are going to protect us. 30 So who am I? Well, I'm of mixed race; I'm a mokopuna from this region right from Taranaki all the way down to Wellington. And prior to that, so we've got - you would have heard about if you have looked into our history with Ngā Rauru Kiitahi - that we actually 35 were here before Captain Cook. Someone talked about him discovering our coast. And we also were here before the Aotea Waka arrived. We were the Kahurere people. So all of us who come from that region actually a product of the Kahurere people and the Aotea Waka. There's only about 4,000 of us, so we think we're pretty 40 special and we think we're pretty precious. When you consider that there is 7 billion people in the world, there is only 4,000 of us.
My great, great, great, great grandmother was Kotiro Hinerangi and she had a relationship with Hōne Heke. That was because Ngāpuhi 45 had come down in a raiding party and taken her up to his area, because she was beautiful. She did eventually move back down this way and he sent a warring party out to get her. She told them to take a hike and that was one of the incidences where he cut down the
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flagpole. She had some children to Alexander Grey from Scotland. That marriage is the first marriage that is in the Russell Museum. At the time it was around the time of the Treaty of Waitangi signing, that was when my kuia was alive and very well versed in the things that 5 were going on in that time. She advocated the missionaries came and they were not allowing marriages between Pakeha and Māori.
However, men were coming here, they were raping women, they were having relationships with women, they were having children, 10 illegitimate children and the children were not taken care of. She was one of the ones that led strongly amongst other wahine at the time that marriages be acknowledged. She's in the Museum, so you can look it up if you need to trace what I'm saying. Her children were, and I'm talking - sorry, I've probably skipped ahead a little bit - you talk about 15 an Act. We have something and it's called law and you talk about a law as well; we have a law as well, and our law is kaitiakitanga, and that kaitiakitanga is a law that is given to us with respect, we have to earn it, and is bestowed from one generation to the other generation. It's been here for thousands of years and it will continue, regardless of 20 Acts that come and go, and the current legislated government. So I am talking about a kaitiakitanga that resides within me.
[5.40 pm]
25 So out of that relationship she had a daughter and her name was Guide Sophia and she's in the museum in Rotorua. She was one that said -- that saw the vision of the dogs on the canoe, that other tourists were there when they saw the dogs, the warheads and they thought it was part of the show. And when they got off the lake they talked 30 about the warriors with dog heads on their canoes and they thought, "Oh, that was a great show" and they said, "It's not a show". Several days later the eruption happened. Guide Sophia saved many people during that time, as she warned of the foretelling disaster. Her sister was my great, great, great grandmother. 35 My great grandfather, Rangowhakaata Kitchener Phillips, spoke as one of the lead translators in the Taranaki Confiscation Māori Land Courts. He was also the principal of the Okaiawa School. He taught my grandmother that nobody is better than you and nobody is worse 40 than you. You do not look up to them and you do not look down at them. She went on to study down - after the war - in Wellington, nursing. She was the only Māori woman amongst her students; she was not allowed to sleep with the others, she was not allowed to reside in the same campus as the other Pakeha nurses, and she wasn't 45 paid the same amount of money. That's where she learned how to cook Chinese because she had a -- there was this one Chinese woman that sat with her. So later on we had wonderful feasts of Chinese kai amongst our kaimoana.
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She was taught rongoā. She taught me rongoā, rongoā being Māori medicines. And one of those medicines would be to go down to the ocean. So we travelled from Island Bay, Wellington all the way up 5 the coastline to Taranaki. And some of the medicines that we gathered were the karengo which is green seaweed and the kelp, which Nana would dry. And so she taught me how to prepare it and she told me how good it was for us, and we had it hanging in our house and we provided it to other people. These are not fantasies; 10 this is not something that happened generations ago; this happened in my generation. I have seen a great decline; I took my mokopunas down to Wellington and Island Bay and Lyall Bay on Friday and I showed them the karengo and I showed them the kelp. We also have it at our beach in the Komaru. My tuakana here talked about the awa, 15 the awa that I talked about here was the Waitotara Awa. It is so polluted I would not let my moko stick their head in it. You would definitely not drink this water and it is the main awa that runs through our whenua.
20 Everything is absolutely connected. The wetlands are like the kidneys of the whenua; the ocean is like the ngāhere, it is like a forest. There are so many plants and species and the biodiversity is so astronomical it is beyond our scope right now. And yet our people knew thousands of years ago of the medicinal purposes that were 25 present in the plants. You talk about mauri and the shift of mauri from a good state of mauri ora to mauri mate, and there are different states of mauri. And in a simple context it is just an energy, a life- force. And energy doesn't die, it simply transforms from one state to another state. And in terms of mauri, when something is alive and 30 active and it is well, it is mauri ora. When it is mauri kero it is in a fluctuating state and possibly can be regenerated. Then there is mauri mate when it is dead.
[5.45 pm] 35 What we worry about with what's happening with the proposition, the application is that once this is dredged up, you disturb the Mauri, you cannot put it back to its original state. To put this as an example of the forest, if you take a tree out of a forest and you say we are going 40 to plant a great big pine forest, for example. You take a tree out of the Ngāhere, you take a tree out of the forest and you say, "Oh, we can plant them somewhere else". You cannot possibly replant the same community that was around that single tree, because it took thousands upon millions of years to generate that forest and the 45 communities that are harvesting around the single tree. So I can't see how you can do that in this area with regard to the seabed mining. So once you've actually disturbed the mauri and you have actually taken what's out of the seabed, and the seabed is like the forest of the -- like
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the ocean floor, because the ocean floor actually hides the creatures and the organisms that come out at night time that feed off everything. Three things that are necessary for the survival are the sunshine, food and water. So at night time things come out of the 5 water, things come out of the seabed.
We have suffered enough. From Taranaki all the way down to Whanganui we had the land confiscations, our rivers are putrid, our lands have been deforested, we have hardly any manu left and the 10 ones that are left are being poisoned by 1080. We don't look at this in isolation and it's very convenient that some people do, but for us that's not our reality because, like my tuakana here, Tanea, said, "It's our children and our mokopuna that will be living with the results". In 30 years, excuse me for being so obvious, but some of us aren't going to 15 be here. And that's not okay for me and it's not okay for us. And we are here but for the acts of our predecessors.
Just finishing, so there's rongoā in the oceans and there's lots of scientific evidence about kelp and karengo. The fact that the negative 20 ions, when you go down to the beach, that's why there are beach resorts, that's why people go for walks on the beach, people feel good. My nana told me about it when I was a child, I didn't know what negative ions were, I still don't know what they are, but I know that when I go to the beach and I take my kids and I take moku and I take 25 my dog, how happy they become and how rested we feel. It's wairua.
I'm just going to finish on the areas that you talk about; so many nautical miles out and the exclusion zone and that sort of thing. Exclusion zones don't mean anything to us in terms of the Mauri. We 30 look more on boundaries and we look more on things like the natural cycles of things. So the currents, the currents that go around Taranaki all the way down to Waikanae. So I went to Waikanae one day and I'm looking on the beach and there are some beautiful rako on the beach. And I said to one of the elders down there, "Oh, I recognise 35 those rako, they look really familiar". And she said to me, "Well, you should, because they come from up your way". I said, "Oh, is that right?" She said, "Yes, they come along the Whanganui River and they go out and then they come back down here and they end up down here". And I said, "Oh, okay" because they actually look like 40 little dragons and she said, "They are delivered to us from this kaitiaki called nuku-kai". Now, we have kaitiaki, Christians have God, Christians have angels. That's what our kaitiaki are, they are our angels, they take care of our spots and our places, and we pray to our kaitiaki like Christians pray to angels. Because even though it might 45 not actually be a dragon or it might not be an angel, it is a life-force that we pray to; it's an energy force that grows.
[5.50 pm]
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Now, you know that you feel love when you love somebody, but you cannot prove it, but you know you can feel it. And you know you feel anger, but you cannot necessarily prove it scientifically or you can't 5 see it in the air, but you know you feel anger. Well, that's mauri and when we pray to our kaitiaki we are giving life-force and energy to that mauri, just like when we hold our mokopuna and we hold our babies when they cry. That's mauri, that's life-force, that's love and it's the same principle, it's not that different. It's not hard to 10 understand if my grandfather from Manchester United, England who was a merchant seaman could understand mauri, I'm sure you of the EPA can do the same thing.
The waiata I'm going to finish off with is called nuku-kai and that will 15 be the finish of our -- that will be the conclusion of our presentation.
(Māori content).
(off mic conversation) 20 MR COATES: Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa, thank you for your mihi; thank you for your kōrero and your intensity. No reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
25 MS McGARRY: Kia ora, again, thank you for coming.
MR THOMPSON: Thank you for your representations and what a beautiful voice you've got.
30 MR SHAW: Kia ora, we are now going to take a break for five minutes or so, at least, maybe let's make it ten, I think. Okay.
ADJOURNED [5.54 pm]
35 RESUMED [6.08 pm]
MR SHAW: Ladies and gentlemen, we are just about going to get back into roll call just to understand who's here, but I will advise everybody that we are seeing Harmony-Charm Carkeek-Edwardson first, because she 40 has to disappear with the mokopuna ASAP, and I think that's in certainly her interest and the interests of the kids that we don't hold things up anymore. Well, I thank everybody else who is here for not raising their hands in objection. While you are sorting yourself out, I am going to just go through. New Plymouth Sports and Underwater 45 Club, here? Pātea and Districts Boating Club? Yes. Vera Van Der Voorden? Yes. Heather Cunningham? Yes. June Penn? Yes. And, Harmony, we have with us. So there's not going to be any shortcuts. Thank you very much. Harmony, away you go. Is it Ms Edwardson?
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[6.10 pm]
MS CARKEEK-EDWARDSON: Carkeek-Edwardson. 5 MR SHAW: Ms Carkeek-Edwardson, away you go.
MS CARKEEK-EDWARDSON: (Māori content)
10 Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou to the DMC and tēnā koe to Phil from KASM, wherever you are, and tēnā koutou e hoa Ma. Do you need that translated?
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Would you like it translated? 15 MS CARKEEK-EDWARDSON: No.
INTERPRETER Mr Hammond: Kei te pai.
20 MR SHAW: That's cool.
MS CARKEEK-EDWARDSON: (Māori content)
This is my first time and I have notes, sorry. So I am a kinaesthetic 25 learner with a strong visual tendency; I am a picture thinker. And in my 31 years I have been fortunate to do a bit of travel around our country and other places around the world. And the big picture hasn't always been pretty, so I am going to share some of this picture as I saw it. 30 A few years ago I went to Hawaii and I did some stand-up paddle boarding around the place; I did some snorkelling and saw lots of their what was to see in their beautiful ocean, and I stood up for the first time in Waikiki, the home of surfing on my surfboard. And on 35 our bus trip back to the airport, the bus driver who was local was telling us that technically there are 150 something islands that make up Hawaii, because whatever is above the water level when the tide is high is considered an island, however there are eight main islands, six of which are inhabited, two are not; one is because it's a reserve and 40 the other one is because there was a whole lot of nuclear testing around the time of Pearl Harbour and it is no longer fit for humans. And he did also pose the question, where is all that nuclear waste that's sitting in the island going. And I presume, like, into the ocean.
45 And just at the end of last year I was in Rarotonga for one of my friend's weddings, and I was -- did a few touristy things. I went snorkelling on Muri Beach and noticed that there was hardly anything to see. And then later on that evening I went stand-up paddle
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boarding, the lights and was again taken around by a local. And he was telling as story of how, when he was younger, that used to be the swimming spot, everyone used to come to Muri Beach to swim because it was beautiful, it was pristine. He said that is no longer the 5 case because in the last five years they have … it has been polluted; there is all sorts of seaweed and what have you that wasn't there, and it was through, I suppose, the exploitation of their ocean. And through trying to build it up for tourism and what have you and not actually caring for it. 10 [6.15 pm]
Over Christmas and New Year we went back to Te Kaha which is on the East Coast in the Bay of Plenty, which is kind of where I come 15 from. And we were camping on some family land and there were quite a few people who went out on the boats to go fishing; there were a couple of boats there and they went fishing, and no one caught anything. My cousins and my sister went fishing off the rocks a couple of times to no avail. Positive story, my son got to go - my ten- 20 year old son - got to go and gather some kina or sea urchins from the rocks and that was a really cool story for him and a great memory for him to take away, however all the other shellfish has deemed toxic and not fit for human consumption.
25 And then over the same period of time I was catching up with one of my best friends who went to Napier, came fishing, she didn't catch anything; she was there for a few days. And then a few days later at the house of a dear friend who passed away we were, quite a few of us were gathered and one of his friends was telling me a story about 30 how he was in Tauranga around about the same time, and he said that 27 boats went out and 27 boats came back with no fish. And that picture makes me pretty sad and that is along the East Coast. And also when we were in Te Kaha my Auntie was giving us, telling us stories of how when she grew up just next door to where we were 35 camping, my Nan used to fish off the rocks to feed her seven children, and it's really sucky that that's a distant memory and not actually something we were able to achieve in our generation.
And then, actually before that, in Whanganui -- 40 MR SHAW: I am sorry, you are going to have to endeavour to bring this into line with the application.
MS CARKEEK-EDWARDSON: Yes, I am. 45 MR SHAW: Well, please do it reasonably promptly.
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MS CARKEEK-EDWARDSON: Okay, this is just in line with my picture thinking and this is the bigger picture.
MR SHAW: Fine. 5 MS CARKEEK-EDWARDSON: And so in Whanganui around Christmas time I happened to be at a local pub and they were eating crayfish and it was offered to me, and it was really good and it had been caught that day off Pātea that afternoon. And I thought, "Wow, this is really awesome, like, 10 this is yum, this is my favourite". And I so I suppose the bigger picture is that there's decline, our oceans are in a bad way. And to have this proposal go forward endangers what we have here on the west coast, to have the same story as on the east coast; going out and not having any more fish, no one catching anything. 15 And so this is a (Māori content) I found was (Māori content). How do you pronounce it properly? (Māori content). With your basket and my basket the people will live. And so imagine or picture the Taranaki Bight as the basket of the people and the impact the 20 proposed mining could have on this. And the other day my ten-year old son asked why I was coming to New Plymouth and I told him that TTR want to mine iron ore or ironsand off the Taranaki Bight. His response was, "I don't think that's a good idea". I'm in total agreement with that and I want the picture my children see and their 25 children and their children's children to be a more beautiful one, not worse.
[6.20 pm]
30 This is a song that my mum used to sing to me when I was little about a majestic mammal, the whale, and this is for the blue whale seen in the area of the proposed mining site in the last couple of weeks, which I believe was 68. It's pretty basic, it's a kid's song, do you know this one? 35 MS HAWIRA: Yes, I'll sing it with you.
MS CARKEEK-EDWARDSON: Okay, do you want to do the actions?
40 MS HAWIRA: Okay.
(Māori content)
MS CARKEEK-EDWARDSON: So that is my story and that's my picture and I'd like it to 45 be more beautiful for the future. No reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
MR SHAW: Thank you.
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MS CARKEEK-EDWARDSON: And thank you for letting me go. Sorry, do you have any questions?
5 MR SHAW: Thank you. All right, New Plymouth Sportfishing and Underwater Club, I think it is Mr Steele, is it? Mr Steele, just before you start, I don't know if you were here earlier when I asked a couple of the individual recreational fishermen who appeared?
10 MR STEELE: No, I was not here for that aspect. I've been here since just before afternoon tea.
MR SHAW: Okay.
15 MR STEELE: Yes.
MR SHAW: You have made at least one good choice in terms of expectation about how timely seeing you was going to be, Mr Steele, but the reason I am asking the question is this. One thing I would like you to think 20 about in talking to the recreational fishing, the individuals and the interests, we had a conversation with them, I guess, about trying to put detail, actual detail around the issues that were raised about fishing spots, reefs, all that sort of thing.
25 MR STEELE: Sure.
MR SHAW: So that those matters could be appropriately investigated and tested by experts, so I'll send you that message now. It is a matter entirely for you. 30 MR STEELE: Thank you.
MR SHAW: It would be very helpful if, in fact, you were to agree to do that. And the other thing was about the recreational fishing interests together 35 passing their eyes over conditions towards the end of this process, if consent was granted, what conditions might be reasonably put in place to protect the interests that you care about.
MR STEELE: Sure. 40 MR SHAW: Okay.
MR STEELE: Thank you, sir.
45 MR SHAW: Over to you.
MR STEELE: So, thank you, committee and thank you, Chair. My name is Ian Steele; I represent the New Plymouth Sportfishing and Underwater
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Club. I'm a committee member, also dive delegate and sportfish council delegate as well, so I have a couple of veins there. I think it's fair to say that I will take our submissions as read by the committee, and I guess I just want to highlight a few points. I take on board the 5 comments that you make regarding content and specifics going forward and we would certainly welcome the opportunity, should consent be granted, to review those conditions.
I think, just to perhaps couch a little bit some of the words that we 10 have provided as a submission, and I will promise to keep it brief and to the point.
MR SHAW: Away you go.
15 MR STEELE: Essentially, our club is a formation of two historic clubs; an underwater club and a sportfishing or it was a cruising club from back in the 50s and 60s. And the membership has grown over many years and many decades and has a base in Port Taranaki. Our waters, so to speak, in terms of if you were going to catch a fish, it was considered 20 a club fish would be from Cape Egmont to the south to almost Kāwhia in the north. So the mining area isn't specifically in what we would consider our natural fishing grounds, however our boats can easily reach well beyond those, easily 100 and something kilometres in a day each way for most of our boats, the larger boats now. 25 [6.25 pm]
Daunting as it may be at times, but I guess my point there is that technology has changed, the membership has changed. The 30 membership is much more about participation rather than necessarily competition. It's one where there is a great awareness of sustainability; there is also great awareness of the children, the grandchildren, etc and we have heard evidence of that today in other ways. The dive club side of it, for example, was instrumental in 35 forming the Sugarloaf Reserve that we now see out of Port Taranaki. And it might seem unusual that a fishing club would be interested in sustainability, but take it for granted that around the world it's common now, tag and release, length and measure and release again, that take is very mindful and the fish area is of importance. And you 40 would have already heard, I believe, from Legacy, for example, who is the public outreach arm of the Sportfish Council, and I am not going to go over their submission in any way, but they are essentially part of us through affiliation.
45 I guess the other part of the membership that I want to clarify or at least paint to you is that standing before you, I am I shouldn't say pretty typical where you have anything from young children all the way through to very old men and women that participate in our club,
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it would be fair to say that I am typical of many of our members, middle aged, probably a little heavier than I should be and fit a certain stereotype. But I think, bearing in mind what I have already said around sustainability and all those types of things, there is also a 5 significant part of our membership and of our club that has a very conscious business sense. And speaking from the point of view that industry and oil and gas and all of those types of developments are very normal in our area, and many of our members would be very keen to see further development in that space. 10 And I guess I will lead on from that just from that background because our submission is on the basis that we would like the application declined in full. So just to highlight some points of our submission, written submission is that the fundamental components 15 were listed as around consultation, essentially that primarily a month for a not-for-profit organisation to consider the thousands of documents, even for a learned professional, is daunting. To be able to even instruct and commission professional people to be able to rely on our behalf is, even with suitable financial resources, is bloody 20 difficult. And I believe that based on the information that we haven't seen come through from the original submission, we do not believe that there has been sufficient consultation or further information provided that satisfies our concerns.
25 I am not going to go through detail on the seabed ecology; I appreciate you have had various experts to cover those points, both direct and indirect impacts, plume effects and the like and including heavy metal content effects on coastal erosion and what have you. Speaking more on the recreational fishing marine mammal and 30 animal side of it, it is fair to say that it does not appear to be sufficient information being gathered or gained around what the population, the species, the wider effects are being understood by anyone. They are not fully documented. It is appreciating that by human nature we learn by our mistakes, however we cannot afford this to be a mistake. 35 [6.30 pm]
I guess to bring it back to draw all of that together probably the analogy that we've shared within the club is around, perhaps, an 40 onshore example of say a quarry or mine that if we were going to talk about a quarry or mine onshore, that we would be talking about boundary effects, or effects at the boundary and being not more than minor. In that case, obviously, if you continue to extend the boundary and the area is large enough, it's starting to become very easy to say 45 that the effects are not more than minor and my challenge would be around where is that boundary because, obviously, with mining or with quarrying, you have pretty much every disturbance, or every effect you can create. Obviously, traffic's not an issue for us in this
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case but dust, noise and, obviously, in the cause of sedimentation in this example like the water contamination and the like, I bring it back to that quarry example. If we had a one and a half to three hectare quarry which is pretty typical for example, in New Zealand, if we 5 were considering that quarry here today there would be very specific guidance on their boundary at that one and a half to three hectare size.
We're talking about something that's 6,500 hectares. 6,500, that's a 185 hectares a year on average through the life of the application. I 10 appreciate that's an average. How many quarries is that; 50 to 60? If we were sitting here considering 50 to 60 quarries for the next 12 months, where would our boundaries be on those effects on our dust and our light, etc, and I just bring that back. So I guess drawing it back to that to a close, our questions is really on certainty. Where is 15 that certainty from a question of the certainty that there is a direct, or indirect effect to the fishery, to us as our way of life as fisher people, to the community and, obviously, those broader things that I've raised within our submission.
20 But the key part is that we need to have certainty. We cannot afford to have this go south. I guess what essentially gets them kicked out if it all goes south, it's going to be a case of where it's gone so far south because the effects were so immeasurable that it's so bad that everybody's walked away and I guess that's what we don't want to 25 see.
So should consent be granted? For us, it's very much about defining the extents of those effects, making sure that they are measurable, making sure they are certain and making sure that our future 30 generations can look back on us and think that we did the right thing. And that's all I have.
MR SHAW: Because you've been so economic, I'm going to indulge myself and ask you two questions. 35 MR STEELE: Sure.
MR SHAW: First question is whether or not, and I take your point about the issues that go well beyond the boundary of the mining site itself, but have 40 you fished the mining site itself?
MR STEELE: Not the mining site itself personally, no.
MR SHAW: Do you know others who have? 45 MR STEELE: Not off the top of my head, no.
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MR SHAW: Okay. And the second question that I've got for you I guess relates to the extent to which -- I mean, you're talking about the voyages that your members' boats can make these days, how far out are people going for recreational fishing? I mean, in a straight line from the 5 coast, shall we say?
MR STEELE: Well, put it in equivalent terms, certainly easily from here if I think northward, for example, Te Kuiti, level with Te Kuiti from here. Certainly no problem with that, I guess, coupled with that trip side of 10 it, obviously the migration of any effects beyond the mining site rather than just necessarily where our boats would travel to. In other words, our boats may not travel to the mining site but, obviously, those effects will be broader.
15 MR SHAW: I was just interested as to whether or not the mining site was a target.
MR STEELE: Certainly in terms of a reach, the Mokau Trench, which is regularly reached for boats is in the order of 100 - 140 kilometres from port and that's each way for a boat to traverse in a day and that's regularly 20 done.
MR SHAW: A long voyage. Okay, I've got no more questions for you. Anyone else?
25 MR COATES: I just wanted to know have you made yourself aware of the expert witness conferencing reports where they agree on certain questions.
MR STEELE: Not recently, no.
30 MR SHAW: No. I just wondered whether you'd been aware that there is some agreement between experts on certain topics such as fish.
[6.35 pm]
35 Apart from declining, if we were satisfied that it was possible to grant conditions, have you got any particular conditions that --
MR STEELE: Not proposed conditions as I sit here now but we'd be more than willing to review or comment on any proposed conditions. 40 MR COATES: And the fish types, you mentioned striped marlin in your submission, what other fish do you fish for?
MR STEELE: Pretty much anything that has a tail and -- 45 MR COATES: You're not just game fish people?
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MR STEELE: No, generally there are certain fish that we will not target. For example, there are some very slow-growing species like the moki species and things like that that are definitely not targeted but pretty much all of your regular bottom fish, blue cod particularly. The blue 5 cod fishery that encapsulates Pātea, for example, is of interest to us in terms of the way the MPI would manage that resource for example.
MR COATES: Would you also target tuna?
10 MR STEELE: Absolutely, yes. So you've got all the tuna, marlin, not sharks, particularly if we end up with any of those, it's a by-catch by trying to catch other species and generally released as best unharmed as possible. A range of all the standard bottom fish that you'd see at the takeaway store, the tarakihi, the gurnard, the blue cod, snapper, john 15 dory, the kingfish, the list goes on.
MR COATES: Well, thank you for your submission and that you for presenting it.
MR SHAW: He was actually going shopping, I think, to be honest, Mr Steele. 20 MR STEELE: We're very fortunately here in Taranaki and not just around the diversity that the fish populations that we've spoken of, East Coast versus West Coast, is certainly quite a genuine observation and I think you've seen that through the media but within Taranaki, we are 25 very lucky with the diversity that we encounter. Some of those species that I've listed before, you do not get in other parts of the country all in the same place.
MR SHAW: Mr Steele, thank you very much. Very helpful. 30 MR STEELE: Thank you.
MR SHAW: And now Mr Purser, I think it is, from the Pātea Club. Mr Purser and friend. 35 MR PURSER: Yes, he's our secretary.
MR SHAW: Never go without a secretary. All right, Mr Purser, you've been here quite long enough today to have a fair idea about what we're asking 40 and expecting of you.
MR PURSER: Yes, right. I'll give you a little bit of background about myself. I've been fishing off Pātea, South Taranaki Bight, for 31 years. Currently the Commodore of the Pātea Fishing Club representing the fishing 45 club and all its members. We totally oppose the seabed mining due to a number of reasons. One because we don't want to be on the end of an experiment that fails and we'll cop the fallout.
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Going back to economics and everything about boats the dearest part, I suppose, isn't actually the boat, it's the upkeep of a boat, so the economy benefits. Recreational fishermen on average will spend around about one billion dollars plus in New Zealand alone. It's huge. 5 Just in Taranaki alone there's over 4,200 boat owners in the Taranaki region. Our fishing club has members of up to 160 plus. We use the waterways over 2,000 times a year and these are registered calls so you can log on to Coastguard and they'll tell you all about it.
10 A lot of the understanding is like I know all about the plume and the size of it and everything but what a lot of people don't understand is off the South Taranaki Bight, the currents can be quite huge, up to 8 knots. It will pull buoys under the water so when they do the experiments on currents, we've actually lost divers and found them 15 later on two miles away within a short period of time, 45 minutes, so they do travel a fair distance and all the currents head south. There's no current that actually heads up north. It swirls around in the South Taranaki Bight and shoots out the other end again.
20 Our main fishing in South Taranaki Bight, it's very good and it has been since I've started fishing and, in fact, the snapper species have increased in volume. The kingfish have increased in large quantities in large numbers, there is a decline in blue cod. We've noticed that over the years, it's actually starting to get harder to get your quota. 25 You can go off, you can leave your home from Hawera, go fishing and in two and a half hours, you can actually catch your quota, you have to bring your lines up and come home again, so we normally sit out in the water for another couple of hours, because, otherwise, I have to mow the lawns and I don't want to get involved with that. 30 [6.40 pm]
I suppose over the years we've farmed the sea. We don't rape and pillage it. We teach our members. We run fishing competitions and 35 we teach kids how to fish. The first year we ran a fishing competition we actually had a boat up for grabs with a brand new outboard on the back for the snapper over 10 kilograms. In those days they were very unheard of. The first year the boat went, the second year, the boat went and the third year, the insurance company that was sponsoring 40 the boat went because they no longer wanted to know us. But now it's not uncommon to catch large fish. They're plentiful and it is one of the best fishing spots in New Zealand it's probably New Zealand's best kept secret.
45 Ted, you'd like to speak a little bit because you'd have different ideas but the Graham Banks to me is a very familiar place, they're breeding ground for blue cod, juvenile blue cod and that's in the actual area of the mining site, the plume. I do fish in the mining site plume area, we
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fish out there quite regularly. It's over 12 miles off Tongahai and out there it is kind of like a sandy bottom but you've got to remember it's where all the big fish hang out, the snapper. They feed, they breed in the sand. There's scallops out there. There's a lot of plentiful seafood 5 out there.
That's all to do with the ecosystem and I'm feeling that why our club is totally against it because if you take the environment and you knock something out of the ecosystem you actually affect the whole 10 circle of life, so our fishing could be depleted, I'm not too sure because I can't answer that question because it hasn't been done yet and we don't want to have a very expensive experiment go wrong.
What do you think, Ted? 15 MR GANE: Yes. Thanks for the opportunity to speak. Yes, I'm a farmer as well as a fisherman and as such, I consider myself to be a reasonably practical person. On our farm the life of our soil is in the top 200 millimetres and I don't go out and rotary hoe that from anywhere to 2 20 to 3 meters and expect it to recover, not even in 100 years or a 1,000 years because I know that it just won't and yet, this is what the proposition is proposing to do out on the sea floor.
As Andrew alluded to, there's a lot of vibrant life and what has been 25 proposed as some sort of undersea desert, well I would say that if this proposition goes through it's going to turn it into a desert and it's going to take years and years, if not generations to actually seemingly recover.
30 One of the things I find quite astonishing is the fact that this proposal is going to uplift the sea floor and supposedly put the extractions that they don't want back on the sea floor. Well, if you take the solid content, the heavy content out of the extraction and put the rest of it back on the sea floor, you have got a very different composition and a 35 very light composition that, like Andrew said, the currents are just going to take it away. So more than likely, you're just going to finish up with big holes out there and it will actually decimate our fishing areas now.
40 Like Andrew, I fish a lot out in the Graham Banks, we go out in that area. It's our most desired area, I suppose, from there and also to the south of the proposed area and, certainly, the plume will affect where we go fishing the most. I take my family out. I take my son out, take my sons-in-law out and am now taking my grandsons out there and 45 like you guys would have heard this afternoon from particularly the Māori people and others about how valuable they consider those sources of a food supply and also enjoyment that we receive from those areas out there.
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Now, I certainly don't want to go out there and fish in dirty water. I don't want to go out there and pull up dirty fish. I want to know that my food supply when I go out there and bring them back to give to 5 my family is going to be clean and healthy and absolutely good for me and my family and it disappoints me to see the second application go through. What concerns me a lot is the fact that you guys have to make a decision here and that's fine, that's your job but I'm really worried that if you say yes to this proposition, it's going to be the door 10 that opens and the horse will bolt because we will see mining applications go ahead right up and down the coast and that's going to affect the people from the Whanganui area right through past Raglan and right up north and that's the big danger that lies behind the decision that you guys will be making over things. 15 So our plea, basically, is to preserve our very, very appreciated and vital fishing spot because nowhere else in the country has got anything like we've got.
20 [6.45 pm]
There's shelf out there that goes out 30-odd meters for ages when you travel in the boat and there's no other shelf around New Zealand that is like that so please preserve it. 25 MR SHAW: Can I just ask one question on that specific matter and it goes to issues that we raised with other fishing groups and that is the identification of these seabed features so that, in fact, it can be tested.
30 MR PURSER: Yes, the Graham Banks is actually on --
MR SHAW: The Graham Banks we know about, so that's all mapped.
MR PURSER: That's already there. 35 MR SHAW: And that's what you were talking about, was it, Ted?
MR GANE: Yes.
40 MR SHAW: What's your surname, sir?
MR GANE: Gane.
MR SHAW: Mr Gane? 45 MR GANE: Ted Gane, yes.
MR SHAW: Just so that we know, for the record, who it is we've been talking to.
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MR GANE: I did actually put in an application to speak and I've been getting emails coming through but I could not find out an allocated time but I appreciate being able to come in with Andrew as part of the club. 5 MR SHAW: That's fine, thank you.
MR PURSER: And the other thing is for the Pātea Boat Club, I suppose we do support the locals in Pātea itself. Economically, we spend on average 10 $160 plus some on fuel, ice-creams, food, lunches, beer, everything else that goes with boating and that kind of equates to around about anything between $320,000 - $340,000 a year that local boaties spend in that community alone.
15 We try and support them as best as we can because Pātea is a hard township. It's got lovely people and it's been brought up hard and our club itself, it's never been burgled or broken into. We've actually left the door unlocked one time and it was untouched so we do have a lot of mana down there. We respect the people and we do like to try and 20 contribute to the community as best as we can.
MR SHAW: We won't advertise your open door policy. Not anywhere. Okay, thank you very much. Anything further from you, gentlemen? No? Mr Thompson, anything from you? 25 MR THOMPSON: No, thank you.
MR SHAW: Ms McGarry?
30 MS McGARRY: No, just thanks for making the effort and waiting today to speak to us.
MR SHAW: Mr Coates?
MR COATES: No. Thank you for your submission. 35 MR SHAW: There's a certain consistency in the submissions we're getting from the recreational fishing people. No surprises there.
MR PURSER: That's all right because I thought I was on New Zealand's Got Talent 40 because everyone was singing. We can't sing and dance.
MR SHAW: I will make no observation about that.
MR PURSER: Thank you. 45 MR SHAW: Okay. Ms Van Der Voorden.
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MS VAN DER VOORDEN: Firstly, I'd like to thank you for staying long enough to allow us to speak. We've come a long way and taken accommodation and spent considerable amounts of money to have our ten minutes worth of time. so I'd like to acknowledge the fact that you're prepared to 5 stay and I thank you and I would also like to thank you in advance for your patience if I do keep reiterating things that have already been heard and I regret that but I would like to keep it in order to maintain the flow of my submission, which I've taken considerable time in putting together. So with that, I'd like to start. 10 I'm here today using the democratic rights that my forebears fought so hard to retain to put a case to you for something I love. I'm not a soldier or a protestor I'm a protector. I do not live on the lunatic fringes. I'm part of a global avant-garde. Behind me, picking up 15 momentum are millions worldwide, a movement of people who see that in order for humans to survive on this planet we need to protect the dwindling sustainable ecosystem resources of our increasingly besieged planet. One of these people is Pope Francis who recently wrote a 64-page encyclical exhorting his followers to protect our 20 common home. This common home is our one-off blue planet we call Earth.
Although I doubt that Pope Francis wrote a submission to this application there were more than 13,000 submitters, New Zealanders 25 who, via the EPA and the democratic process, voiced their concern to this application. When the EPA considered only a handful of submissions in the analysis of submission report, it wiped out the largest majority of submissions.
30 [6.50 pm]
Could the EPA have wiped out more than 80 per cent of TTR's argument? I believe not. This is a travesty of justice and should be rectified. I am one of these 13,000 or more submitters unseen, the 35 privileged one who can afford to be here, take time out and pay for associated costs. As a volunteer protector, I am now going to state my case.
TTR claims that the project will deliver substantial economic benefits 40 to New Zealand whilst employing the world's best practice with sustainable environmental outcomes. This arrogant statement epitomises all that is wrong with this application. For a start, there is not contractual guarantee that TTR will deliver substantial economic benefits. 45 The statement is actually mocking as the applicant has shown that the profits will be directly exported overseas and the best paid jobs would be fly in, fly out professionals who would spend little time onshore.
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According to TTR information, they would live on board so no local restaurants, supermarkets or accommodation providers would benefit.
Besides, an actual amount of gain from 2 per cent royalty rates and 5 taxation at 28 per cent is minimal in comparison to the country's export values. Putting a sustainable fishing industry and all its employees at risk for this is disconcertingly questionable.
To boot, in their previous application, TTR was caught out in their 10 enthusiastic overstating of the benefits to Taranaki, ie numbers to be employed as well as the potential building of infrastructure. Can we rely on an honest, balanced evaluation this time? It seems not as I've not an equation having been adequately produced by TTR which subtracted from the projected economic gains, the potential losses to 15 the fishing industry, the loss of small tourist businesses reliant on healthy oceans and the loss of a natural capital asset of our marine environment, nor the cost of social disruption these losses could bring about.
20 Moreover, in paragraph 120 of the key issues report, it's stated that GHD are of the view that the quantum of the difference between gross and net economic impact is still likely to result in a positive net economic impact, ie a benefit for the New Zealand economy, but with a low degree of risk present as to this not occurring provided the 25 project is able to operate at or above commercial breakeven levels. So GHD acknowledge that there is a degree of risk. Worryingly, the risk is based on skewed predictions. Sadly, this risk will be borne by the local Taranaki residents I referred to in the paragraphs above. If I were a tourism operator in Taranaki, I would like to know the DMC 30 were covering my back.
What I see is that while a relatively small handful of TTR investors stand to gain economically, the many small to medium business operators and their families dependent on the marine environment for 35 their income in Taranaki could be ruined by this mining activity. Think of the petrol station employees who fill up the boaties' tanks every week and/or the diving businesses, fishing charters, surfing and its associated apparel stores and gear hire, diving and surfing lessons, accommodation providers and even fish and chip shops. Small 40 business is the backbone of the New Zealand economy and the region of Taranaki is no different.
Furthermore, in all our discussions, we seem to forget that any potential economic gain may not be seen until well into the future. 45 TTR could pay off all its investment first before New Zealand treasury coffers see a return on our asset. It could well be that by the time TTR shows a profit, 20 years will be up and they could be gone with the tide and surely royalties are not really profit. They are a
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trade-off for the iron ore taken and tax should not be seen as a profit as we all pay tax and if tax was profitable, New Zealand would not be in deficit.
5 I say to you it would be a safer bet for the Taranaki region to create alternative seabed strip mining that is truly sustainable. We know there are a variety of cetaceans off the coast and the development of tourism ventures similar to that of Kaikoura would be a better investment because the income generated by locals would be spent 10 locally and the infrastructure inter-generationally owned by the people.
The fact that there will be undoubtedly a negative environmental effect on a large scale which cannot be mitigated cannot, in all 15 honesty, be called a sustainable and environmental outcome. TTR admits that the marine environment will be hugely impacted on and it is argued the effects of the destruction of the food web could take more than 20 years duration of the application. None of the experts offers a confident prediction on the issue. 20 [6.55 pm]
The fact that it has taken millions of years for the mountains to erode and the sand and ore to find its way to the seabed makes the strip 25 mining a non-sustainable industry. The fishing and tourist industry can be forever contributing substantially to our GDP.
I am concerned with the evidence and studies this application is based on. True science is based on the study of a huge range of variables 30 tested with controlled experiments. The project research is based mainly on desktop studies which have not been tested and is therefore not real science. Desktop studies and modelling is like writing up an equation based on given figures. As soon as a variable is introduced, the outcome of the equation changes. The more variables, the more 35 unreliable the outcome. That is why TTR is proposing to establish conditions or some baselines against which to measure or test the actual damage to what the models predict to allow for all the variables that they have not properly studied after the consent. It is a foot in the door approach that is alarming and absolutely not acceptable. 40 The environmental lawyer Sarah Ongley put it so succinctly when she said recently in the Taranaki Daily News:
"TTR is using a sophisticated sediment plume model. The difficulty 45 is that a model is only as robust as its assumptions/inputs and in this case, inputs are many and complex - the plume affected by tides, larger scale currents, weather events, wind, sediment size and concentrations. In answering a question about the accuracy of
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modelling results, TTR states, 'It will not be possible to establish this directly until and unless the consent is granted and the proposal implemented'."
5 Sarah Ongley also said:
"This is not surprising but can a marine consent be granted on this basis?"
10 I do not like or feel comfortable that our precious resource, our fragile marine environment is to be a guinea pig experiment with unknown outcomes. The stakes are too high to gamble away a currently healthy ocean for future generations of New Zealanders. Despite TTR claiming that this is not new technology, this type of mining and 15 these steps are still in a highly experimental phase and for it to rely on this desktop pseudo science is frankly terrifying. I would never personally go into business with a partner who offered so little certainty.
20 To compensate for this lack of certainty, TTR is wanting to use an adaptive management type of programme, ie make things up as one goes along. That is absolutely not acceptable because, unlike on land, any ecological problems in this turbulent marine environment will be difficult to repair. In fact, I remind you TTR admits mitigation is not 25 possible. We are told by TTR the damage to our seabed cannot be avoided or mitigated.
Already to date the relentless exploitation of natural resources by irresponsible private sector companies has created countless problems 30 that are too often left to local governments and the taxpayer to handle. It is the people who end up paying the price for the exploitation. A recent example of this is $21.7 million clean-up of the Tui mine at Te Aroha after the miners left.
35 So, in conclusion, what sort of exchange are we offering the people of Taranaki and where are their guarantees? Who will be accountable if the desktop studies, the modelling and the predictions are wrong? Who will pay for the destruction and continued loss for a sustainable healthy marine habitat after the company has made its profit and 40 disappeared? Well, let me tell you. In exchange for very few jobs and marginal trickling down economic benefit, the people of Taranaki stand to gain a potential marine wasteland. There will be decades long large-scale devastation of the directly mined marine environment and further desolation in the path of the plume and no one is 45 accountable. No one accountable.
It is my view that it is the DMC's task to protect the interests and the assets belonging to all our four and a half million people more than
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bowing to the pressure of an offshore opportunist venture. I am not alone in stating there are still too many uncertainties. The precautionary principle should be applied. The DMC has a responsibility to protect our marine environment eco systems, our 5 health, the welfare of our people, our future generations and social justice. I ask this application be declined.
MR SHAW: Mr Coates, any questions?
10 MR COATES: Thank you for a very thoughtful submission. It didn't fall under the chapter of repeating other people's evidence so thank you for that. I don't really have any questions because it's a topic that's been fairly widely covered but thank you.
15 MS VAN DER VOORDEN: Thank you for giving me the time.
MR SHAW: Ms McGarry.
MS McGARRY: I'd just like to thank you for making the effort and taking the time to 20 travel here to speak to us today. We really do appreciate that, delivering it face to face, so thank you.
MR THOMPSON: Thanks for your submissions. No questions, thanks.
25 MS VAN DER VOORDEN: Thank you.
MR SHAW: Heather Cunningham.
[7.00 pm] 30 MS CUNNINGHAM: I had originally intended to say, "Good afternoon" but I see I'm saying, "Good evening" and I wanted to come over and say to I want to thank you for staying up so late listening to me.
35 MR THOMPSON: Good evening.
MS CUNNINGHAM: You as well.
MS McGARRY: Thank you. 40 MS CUNNINGHAM: But I want you to look me in the eye and I want you to listen to me. I'm not a schoolteacher but I can be schoolteacher-ish and I don't want to pull that part of me out today.
45 I've been here most of the day and I'm very acutely aware that a lot of the things that I have said in my oral submission have already been spoken of today. And so what I'd like to do is just pull out briefly
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some of those things in respect of the constraints of the day and respect to you and the other people here.
So I will start off by saying kia ora. My name is Heather 5 Cunningham and I live on the beautiful west coast of New Zealand at Raglan. I'm the previous managing director of Auckland Occupational Safety Health and Environment Associates. I have a BSc and I have got post-graduate diplomas in health and rehabilitation and I'm a registered nurse. And I'm here today as a 10 New Zealander concerned for our environment and for our social future.
I wish to acknowledge you, I wish to acknowledge the tangata whenua and the applicants at this hearing today. I also acknowledge 15 the many others who have made applications and aren't able to be here for a number of really important reasons which I want to talk to further on. This is the second time that I have stood before a DMC hearing considering an application by TTR to mine the seabed off the South Taranaki coast. On the first occasion, I stood beside my 20 partner Mike Murdoch who, despite his very severe disability, stood from his wheelchair and stood for the whole duration of his address and answering of a number of questions and, unfortunately, he's not with us now.
25 I'm a mother and a grandmother and because hearings of this committee are reduced to two locations or the rather poor substitute of videoconferencing, I'm unable to bring my grandchildren here today and so I speak today on behalf of Olivia Howe, eleven years old; Amelia Searle, two and a half years old and precious wee James 30 Westerby who is one year old.
There was talk earlier today of an elephant in the room and I couldn't help but think that there ought to be a huge heap of black sand in the room over there where my grandchildren could play while I spoke to 35 you because their playing in black sand is what this is about. Their enjoyment of our precious environment.
I'm a west coaster through and through. That namby-pamby white sand over there, no. Give me black sand. And it should stay where it 40 is. That black sand is our black sand. It's the black sand that belongs to my children, my grandchildren and future generations. That black sand doesn't belong to somebody else.
[7.05 pm] 45 And that might sound really emotional. Well, this is an emotional issue. There is more than the scientific paradigm, that Cartesian
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reductionist paradigm that has taken a hold of so much of our experience of life. It is not the only paradigm.
I want to talk very briefly about the benthic ecology. Oh, no, I won't. 5 You've heard all that. But I want to say to you that I'm here also to speak for the mammals. I'm concerned deeply about the endangered mammals in that area being affected by the plume and the noise.
You've heard scientific details today and you have records of those 10 through the submission process and as a result of a clear lack of knowledge admitted by TTR about what will happen, there is an unquantifiable threat to the mammals in the region. And I speak also on their behalf because there are no whales here and so I have to stand up for them, just like I stand up for my grandchildren. 15 The habitat of the highly endangered Māui’s dolphin must not be tampered with. My generation is responsible for so much global degradation and destruction often undertaken due to ignorance or just unadulterated greed. Well, I'm a learning individual and we know 20 that there are only approximately 55 Māui’s dolphins living in the sea off the North Island's west coast. We know this. We're not ignorant and people like me and you are responsible for curbing that unadulterated greed. It is our responsibility to preserve what we have for the future. 25 It would be inexcusable for us to proceed to desecrate the habit of this endangered creature. I speak for my grandchildren and for those future generations and I am here to speak for the Māui’s dolphin too. TTR is not a mum and dad operation. Oh, no, let us not be deceived. 30 This application represents a huge global capital investment project that will have some of the largest ships ever on the coast of Aotearoa.
Mr Hamilton, earlier today, talked about the amount of water that is going to be desalinated and pumped back into that ocean. TTR will 35 use a 450 tonne crawler operating 24/7 to destroy the seabed as deep as the size of a two to three-storey building. We're not just talking about scraping a bit of sand up, are we? We're not talking about the natural occurrence of sand movements. We're talking about digging down into the earth. They even say that they could leave a dead zone 40 that may never recover. We've seen today the beautiful South Taranaki seabed - those amazing photographs - and is this a habitat that we are prepared to destroy? I think not.
I want to draw your attention to the article written by Laurel Stowell 45 from the Wanganui Chronicle. I have added it to the back of this document for you and it describes the work of Dr Leigh Torres who has worked researching into the presence of blue whales in South Taranaki. And it's so important to note that only 33 whales were
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observed in 2015 and that, this year, 68 different individuals in multiple sighting over 9 days were observed.
She goes on to discuss the multiple impacts of seabed mining on these 5 mammals and, in my view, these findings are significant and now highlights beyond a doubt the importance of this area to these marine mammals. This is an environment we must absolutely protect.
[7.10 pm] 10 She says that the mitigating strategies of Trans-Tasman's mining proposals were incomplete and that's been reiterated here so many times today. The thing is that the whales and the dolphins, they have rights. 15 It is said that once you have looked into the eye of a whale, you are never the same and that's an expression of a different paradigm to cetacean science. And I have looked into the eye of a whale and that whale looked back at me and I am changed forever because of it. I 20 can't prove anything scientifically but I am different because of it and I want future generations to be able to scarper off the coast here and have that extraordinary experience. We can't add a price to that. We are talking about something that doesn't fit into an equation, a balancing act. It's something so precious and personal and I want 25 many, many New Zealanders in the future to have that wondrous experience.
I don't know if any of you have visited Kaikoura in the 1970s or the 1980s. Well, I did, and it was a sorry little community back then, it 30 truly was, devastated by a declining economy and we're all aware now of the incredible impact of eco-tourism and in particular whale watching that it has had on that community and actually indeed on the rest of New Zealand because people who come to New Zealand to see whales come to New Zealand to do lots of other things as we well 35 know.
And I refer to the report in 2009, the Socio-Economic Value of Cetacean Conservation presented to the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts in Australia and those findings are quite 40 outstanding in terms of the economic benefits to Kaikoura and I've given you a number of those there in this document. But factors like 100 new businesses in the period of the research is phenomenal, isn't it?
45 The economic repercussions of that sort of thing are huge and in those 30 years since the commencement of the sustainable commercial whale watching in Kaikoura, this otherwise isolated community has flourished. I was there two years ago and I was totally amazed at the
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economic and social turnaround of that area. Young people in particular have a sustainable future there and that is just so important in these rural areas. I hope I haven't given you a headache.
5 MR SHAW: No, I'm afraid it's entirely other causes.
MS CUNNINGHAM: Oh, good. Good, I'm pleased. And you would have to have a bag on your head to not recognise the fact that the potential for development of eco-tourism in this Taranaki area is huge and I would even like to 10 put it to TTR that you may like to be considering making an application to commence the cetacean watching venture which is a totally sustainable business and bring real wealth and prosperity to the people of Taranaki.
15 I need to address the issue of recreational fishing because Mark, whom I spoke of earlier, addressed this issue and it is no different. I know this is a different application and this is a different DMC but the issue around recreational fishing for ordinary Kiwis hasn't changed and I just want to reiterate how important it is to people. It's a 20 cultural activity. It's not just an economic one or just a recreational one. It connects people with these fundamental hunter/gatherer urges feeding their families and enjoying the natural environment.
[7.15 pm] 25 Mark talked about the investment he, alongside many others in New Zealand, had made in their fishing ventures. The boats, the vehicles, the boat accessories, fishing gear, equipment ad infinitum, believe me our garage was full of the stuff and that's even before you buy bait 30 and safety equipment and pay for licences and warrant of fitness and garage and insurance and maintenance of the boat and the trailer and the vehicle. Mark would spend somewhere in the vicinity of $3,000 to $5,000 a year on top of the $100,000-ish investment for the boat and the truck. 35 He pointed out to the DMC very succinctly that no one catches fish in dirty water and the plume to be created by the TTR proposed mining will produce plenty of toxic uninhabitable dirty water and, again I'm not sure if this aspect of our lives can be reduced to a dollar value. I 40 really don't think it can be any more than we can add a dollar value or quantify the loss of a species like the Māui’s and I do not know that those of us who fish for our families in this region can allow the people to be deprived of that cultural right.
45 And, finally, I wish to address the issue of accountability because monitoring and auditing is something that I have a significant amount of experience in and I have asked the question, who will be accountable for the constant, thorough and vigilant auditing and
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monitoring of TTR's mining? And we have to add in there research because they intend to do the research as they go along because the baseline material has not been done. And it appears that the EPA is so poorly resourced that even these hearings have been completely 5 inadequately funded so much so that the current process has excluded many people who are, unlike me, able to journey to this site. People in Auckland get no real opportunity. I'm sorry but videoconferencing just really doesn't cut it for people my age. Were just not into it.
10 MR SHAW: I should interrupt you there because it's not something that many people appreciate but these hearings are run on a full cost recovery basis so the people who wind up paying for them are the applicant.
MS CUNNINGHAM: Well, they haven't fronted up with enough. 15 MR SHAW: I think you need to know that when you made the statement you did about them being funded that it's on a cost recovery basis. Anyway, off you go.
20 MS CUNNINGHAM: As it ought to be.
MR SHAW: Well, that may well be so. Certainly that's the view the government took when the legislation was passed.
25 MS CUNNINGHAM: I don't intend to go into all of the failings here. However, it would also appear that the EPA is on the back foot. I received quite a number of conflicting late emails about this. We're going much longer today than would have been expected. It's an overwhelming situation and this is not uncommon with authorities who are charged 30 with monitoring activities.
I've worked for over 30 years with corporations throughout the country in the areas of occupational health, safety and environmental monitoring and I have grave concerns that shortcuts, underreporting 35 and obscure or even mischievous internal monitoring processes with simplistic and inadequately resourced external monitoring has the potential for significant breaches of any conditions which may be attached to a consent. And I'm not just pulling that out of a bag. I have actual experience of corporations behaving in that manner. 40 And I draw your attention to the Environmental Defence Society's recently released report Last Line of Defence - compliance monitoring and enforcement in New Zealand's environmental law by their senior policy analyst Dr Marie Brown. The report highlights 45 concerning weaknesses and calls for significant improvements across a range of agencies.
[7.20 pm]
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The report identifies a wide range of worrying issues including poor quality law, for which you are not accountable, often limited capacity and capability of agencies and this was confirmed this morning to me 5 when Mr McClay rejected using the Taranaki regional council’s own marine biologist, Dr Emily Roberts, for her expertise in the submission process. The New Zealand authorities are on record as not being able to safely manage the critical aspects of monitoring and mitigating fallout from current activities and I refer again to my 10 experience in occupational safety, health and environment management. I am unconvinced that there will not be serious weaknesses related to monitoring the seabed mining.
Notwithstanding all that I’ve said as to the reasons why this 15 application should be denied, I am of the belief that the current Government is unmotivated to vest all that would be required to ensure that TTR complies absolutely with any conditions which may be applied. It is my view that you are charged with applying a precautionary approach to this application and you, the DNC, are the 20 servants of all New Zealanders. Your task is to serve us, not corporations offering scanty science and a clear lack of onus regarding mitigation. You are to protect our marine environments, its ecosystems, the welfare of the people and our future generations’ right to enjoy all that the natural phenomena has of the South 25 Taranaki Bight uncompromised by artificial, colossal artificial changes. I thank you.
MR SHAW: Thank you Ms Cunningham. Any questions? Mr Thompson?
30 MR THOMPSON: No? Thanks, Ms Cunningham. No questions, thank you.
MR SHAW: Ms McGarry?
MS McGARRY: I just reiterate that it’s been a long day. Thank you for waiting and 35 thank you for travelling to see us. We do appreciate being able to eyeball you as much as you can eyeball us.
MS CUNNINGHAM: Thank you.
40 MR SHAW: Mr Coates?
MR COATES: Thank you, thank you.
MR SHAW: Thank you, Ms Cunningham. 45 MR SHAW: Ms Penn? Welcome.
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MS PENN: Thank you and I appreciate the DMC for waiting this long to hear the last speaker of the day. I’ve got the unenviable position of trying to keep your interest in what I know has been a marathon day for you so thank you. 5 Kia ora. My name is June Penn. I’m a New Zealander. I have worked all my life in the interests of my whānau, my workmates, my community and towards keeping our beautiful country both economically and environmentally healthy for current and future 10 generations. I have a BSc from the University of Canterbury and over 30 years of experience in business. Upon moving to the North Island three years ago, I have been on a steep learning curve about the extent to which our modern lifestyle is threatening the environment and ultimately the economic health of our country. I am deeply 15 concerned that the current New Zealand economic strategies which enshrine short-term financial economic gains and consider the natural environment merely as a resource for exploitation are setting us on an irrevocable path to ultimate failure and poverty. I will endeavour to keep my statements here very brief so that I am not reiterating what 20 you’ve already heard but I have a key message here for you that I would really appreciate if you could stay awake to listen to.
This new industry of seabed mining is second only to the nuclear industry in its potential to destroy the health of New Zealand. This 25 application from TTRL is a precedent setting critical decision to get right and I understand that weight that’s on your shoulders. As I am sure this learned DMC is well aware, approval of this application would open the floodgates for all mining companies in waiting. Moving quickly to the rest of the west coast at Chatham Rise and 30 throughout the EEZ. In our lifetimes we would see long-term devastation and destruction of our relatively healthy marine environment to the extent that the legacy that we would leave for our children and our grandchildren would be significant large areas of ocean dead zones devoid of food and biodiversity. 35 Make no mistake about it, what we are talking about here is pollution on an unprecedented scale. In our pursuit of short-term economic gains at the mindless expense of our valuable liquid gold, fresh water, we have trashed our rivers so that today most of them can’t be 40 consumed at source; our children can’t even swim in them without getting sick. Next on our economic agenda? Let’s pollute our oceans. This path is illogical and it breaks my heart.
[7.25 pm] 45 So in reading through all the materials and trying to keep up with what has been said and reading of the joint witness statements, the question there is that bounces out to me, as a New Zealander that has
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worked my entire life for the health of our economy and our environment from business, the question that jumps out to me today is: who, specifically, is mining the South Taranaki Bight good for? Who or what really benefits here? I won’t go through the evidence. I 5 have read the joint witness statements. I would very much like to draw your attention to some key points from the key issues report which says in no uncertain terms certain mortality of the benthic biodata. Sediment that will smother, decrease light, release contaminants, result in loss of species, reduce primary production, 10 impaired feeding, impaired respiration, loss of food resources, bioaccumulation, toxicity. You know; you’ve read the stuff. That translates in lay terms to death for uncountable marine life. Who benefits there?
15 Shaw Mead, please have another look at his evidence. He raises some really important points about the knowledge gaps, about the actual impacts on biodiversity in the benthic communities, the ecosystem services that are largely unknown and unquantified. He talks about the lack of detail about the spatial arrangements of the 20 operations and reiterates the considerable uncertainty. Worryingly, with a scientific background, with reference to the 2015 sediment plume model Mead states:
"This is based on laboratory tests on three different sediment types 25 with only one sample for each sediment type. This violates basic principles for the design of meaningful tests and the interpretation of their results."
With your scientific background I know you understand that. This is 30 not the right science from which to make these huge assumptions that fed through to all of the other assumptions that are being made here in the science.
Please realise that the elevated sediment inputs from the rivers are not 35 natural. This is a cumulative impact. TTRL's claims that the project will not result in adverse cumulative effects are unsubstantiated as mine-derived sediment would be added to sediment loads already beyond natural levels. Given this lack of knowledge about the current benthic communities and stresses on them, we cannot predict whether 40 or not the communities are at their natural stress loads already. So those are some key statements that jump out to me.
The science behind benthic ecology and the potential recovery is at best uncertain and at worst unsound. The modelling of the plume and 45 the extent of any flocculation is unreliable and therefore it's not okay to use that in the impact estimates. The joint benthic experts disagree about when the mining area and areas covered by the plume may recover. There is no actual relevant field evidence that it will recover
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and there is doubt that any benthic communities that may move back into the area will be the same. This is undeniable; this is in the agreed expert witness statements. I will quote from the joint witness statement really quickly: 5 "A different progression of species may become established due to changes in substrate. Therefore there will be no recovery."
[7.30 pm] 10 There is a high risk that the current natural environment and biodiversity in the area will be lost permanently. The loss of or the permanent change to that benthic environment will impact the entire ecosystem, changing what may or may not be able to live there. The 15 expert evidence on marine mammals, fish and birdlife alert us to further alarming risks. Will there ever again be enough krill for the whales? Will the noise mean that mammals won't find food and reproduce? Will the accumulating loss of habitat be a death knell for the critically endangered Māui's dolphins? How many seabirds will 20 die? How much and for how long will the loss of food from the area affect the human population? Lack of research on these and many other questions equate to lack of uncertainty on the impact of this mining.
25 This is not a project that, in my mind, contributes to the health of the oceans, to the marine life, nor does it contribute to human health, economic or environmental. We can expect that it is in TTRL's financial interest to organise the understatement of the environmental impact. We must see through this. If approved, this project and the 30 projects which will follow will have massive destructive impact on the economy if we are balancing environment and economy.
Let's think about how much money here. The joint statement from the economic experts clearly acknowledges the fact that TTRL's 35 stated economic benefits ignores the actual costs of the project and that it considers only net financial benefits ignoring the need for, analysis of, or even comment on, the actual net economic benefit to New Zealand. It was agreed that the model was not even trying to determine the net benefits to New Zealand but was rather, quote from 40 the joint witness statement, "Identifying the economic benefits of the ironsands project". Full stop: not the benefits to New Zealand. I come from a business background. That doesn't sound to me like a cost benefit analysis.
45 TTRL's own economic expert, Jason Leung-Wai admits, "I accept that my analysis only measures the benefits to the study areas and is not net of potential costs" and, "I have made no attempt to evaluate
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the potential value of the environmental and social costs attributable to the project".
We have heard a lot about the social and cultural costs today. Where 5 is that in your balanced decision making? I don't see it. This is not best information upon which to make an informed decision on the effects on the environment, biodiversity and ecosystems. I don't believe you're seeing best information balanced against the economic benefit to New Zealand. 10 If the economic experts agreed, the line that jumps out at me from that joint witness statement - I haven't got long to go, Mr Chairman - a full BCA would be useful to support decision making and that it would capture and reflect all the costs and benefits associated with the 15 project. That this would be no small task doesn't matter. This should be done properly if you are to make an informed decision. If a proper and full cost-benefit analysis was undertaken, including potential loss and loss of current values, you don't need to be an economist to see that it's likely that the conclusion would be that there is not only no 20 net benefit to New Zealand but that there is a considerable negative impact to the economic and environmental wellbeing of our country.
Consider what we are giving away. Consider that perhaps there will be, in the near future, a much better, sustainable, long-term benefit 25 from keeping the South Taranaki Bight ecosystems healthy and intact. There be an enormous value, as yet undiscovered, and ecotourism has huge potential as you've heard. It's easy to foresee the day where any decision to allow this mining of the seabed on the west coast of New Zealand will be seen, retrospectively, as an irresponsible mistake. 30 [7.35 pm]
Given this much doubt and logically balanced we can see no sustainable benefit to the health of New Zealand's environment, nor to 35 the real economy, I come back to my question: who then would benefit from the mining of the South Taranaki Bight? I did a brief descriptive cost benefit analysis to get my thoughts together and that cost benefit analysis in my mind clearly shows that the main beneficiary would be TTRL shareholders, with respect, gentlemen. 40 This small group of people, many of whom are not even New Zealanders, are the only true beneficiaries here and some mining company employees and contractors have or would benefit in the short-term. That is the beneficiary here. That is who this project is good for. Everyone else loses. 45 There is none to negligible benefit here for the vast majority of New Zealanders. My family won't benefit. The homeless people on the streets won't benefit. It won't pay off New Zealand's debt. This is a
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public asset. It should not be traded for such a small benefit to so few. This is not effective use of our natural resources. It is certain that there is a huge amount of cost to the natural environment and marine life, social and customary values and rights. That is certain. 5 Monitoring the damage to prove or disprove laboratory methodology is conducting an irreversible experiment in real life. Lessons learned about damage done can't be undone. Necessary solutions are likely impossible or too impractical for the EPA to control especially as the floodgates would open. How many staff is the EPA planning to take 10 on to cope with this? Who would pay for these staff? Who would pay for the monitoring and the clean-up? The taxpayers? Future generations? This project is, on balance, illogical and in my opinion it amounts to an unacceptable risk.
15 What really bothers me, and I hope that it bothers the DMC, relates to our accountability as submitters and decision makers. How will we answer the questions from the next generation about why we ever let this happen? Our youngsters are already pointing the finger at us, asking why we let the rivers get so polluted we can't swim in them or 20 eat from them. We are seen as the generation of excess, chasing a quick dollar with irresponsible attention to the consequences which they will have to live with for decades or, in this case, even centuries to come.
25 The compounding mess we are creating from our comfortable lifestyles of excess, that's our legacy. How sad. We can see the polluted mess from seabed mining coming. The question is in front of us now. We are aware. Our eyes are open. This is destruction of habitat and entire ecosystems and pollution of our own backyard on a 30 massive scale. What will we tell the next generation about why we ever let this scale of oceanic pollution happen? What on earth could an acceptable answer be? There is no truthful answer that our children and our grandchildren will accept nor forgive us for. We cannot defend a decision to grant consent for this scale of certain 35 pollution.
I implore you, as the people accountable for making this huge decision on behalf of us all under New Zealand law set up to protect New Zealand interests, please do the logical and the right thing. 40 Decline this application in its entirety. Thank you.
MR SHAW: Thank you, Ms Penn. Ms McGarry?
MS McGARRY: I certainly haven't got any question for you. You have made a very 45 articulate and very passionate plea to us. Thank you for your time and for coming to speak to us again today.
MR SHAW: Mr Coates?
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MR COATES: No. No question.
MR SHAW: Mr Thompson? 5 MR THOMPSON: No questions but thanks and we've heard you.
MS PENN: Thank you.
10 MR SHAW: Thank you very much.
All right. That brings us to the end of the day and well into the beginning of the evening.
15 We will see you all tomorrow; 9.00 am kick-off tomorrow but a 9.30 am start for Thursday. Thank you all. No procedural matters, Mr Holm? Anything from you Mr McCabe? No? Okay, thank you. Goodnight.
20 MATTER ADJOURNED AT 7.38 PM UNTIL WEDNESDAY, 8 MARCH 2017
Devon Hotel, 390 Devon Street East, New Plymouth 07.03.17