Bathurst's Coalgate mine avoids abatement notice - for now

Wednesday, 17 January 2018

Behind the small town of Coalgate inland from Christchurch is a significant mining operation that is expected to be enlarged.

Bathurst Coal has successfully appealed in the Environment Court against a Selwyn District Council order to reduce the number of truck movements at a mine at Coalgate, inland from Christchurch.

The company supplies Fonterra's milk processing factory at Darfield with about 65,000 tonnes of coal a year and may increase the amount over coming years.

Bathurst Coal was previously fined for failing to protect the Waianiwaniwa River, which runs through the Malvern Hills, from mining sediment and potentially threatening the endangered Canterbury mudfish.

A resident of Coalgate said lights were visible in recent weeks, reflected from the valley where the mine is.

The Environment Court granted Bathurst a temporary stay against the Selwyn council abatement notice until a full hearing.

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The abatement notice would have required Bathurst to stop truck and trailer movements of more than 80 a week.

Bathurst filed its appeal on December 22, claiming it had consents for 120 truck movements a week, and the abatement notice would have significant implications for Fonterra's factory.

Furthermore, the Selwyn council had served the abatement notice on December 21 as offices were about to close for holidays, and the company had been in dialogue with the council during 2017 and had no warning it would be served, Bathurst's lawyer told the court.

Bathurst disagreed with the council's interpretation about the number of truck movements allowed under its resource consent, and had prepared another one to assess the implications of the traffic movements.

'To meet our undertaking we engaged a traffic consultant to assess routes to and from the site and potential effects of our trucking movements. The first consultant we engaged did not progress work in spite of repeated follow up requests and we had to engage another consultant. This obviously has caused delays,' Bathurst's lawyer told Environment Court judge Jon Jackson.

Production from the Coalgate mine, which Bathurst bought in 2014, was expected to grow from 100,000 tonnes a year to 175,000 tonnes a year, much of it destined for Fonterra's factories in the Canterbury area. The proximity of the mine makes it cheap to transport.

New plant and equipment have been installed at the site over the past 24 months.

Bathurst has further expansion plans at Coalgate for a new dump nearby and opening up Surveyors Gully for mining.

The company is preparing to lodge resource consent applications.

Three months ago, Bathurst Coal, an arm of ASX-listed Bathurst Resources, was fined $10,500 by Environment Canterbury (ECan) for 14 counts of unauthorised run-off from the open cast mine at Coalgate for unconsented sediment runoff at Bush Gully Rd into the Waianiwaniwa River, which ultimately flows into Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere.

The mining and new exploration created significant areas of exposed soil and ECan officers found sediment controls were not in place.

Selwyn Waihora zone manager Michaela Rees said at the time that the mine had potentially affected the habitat of the region's most threatened fish species – the Canterbury mudfish – which is also taonga to Ngāi Tahu.