A protest action carried out by SHVC at the head office of Solid Energy in 2005.
The Save Happy Valley Coalition (SHVC) is an environmental activist movement formed with the express purpose of preventing the Cypress mine, an open cast coal mine on the West Coast of New Zealand, from proceeding.
Individuals previously involved in the Save Happy Valley Coalition have continued their work in groups such as Coal Action Network Aotearoa and the Biodiversity Defence Society.
History
In 2004, Solid Energy, a New Zealand State owned enterprise, applied for resource consents under the Resource Management Act for the Cypress Mine, a proposed open-cast coal mine. The consents were granted by the Buller District Council and the West Coast Regional Council. The Buller Conservation Group, Forest and Bird and Te Runanga O Ngati Waewae, and the Department of Conservation appealed the consent decision to the Environment Court. The appeal was declined and the resource consents confirmed in a decision issued on 24 May 2005.[1]
Jon Oosterman, a spokesperson for the campaign, vowed publicly that a direct action campaign would proceed to halt the mine.[2] The Forest and Bird appealed the decision in the High Court, and in December 2005, the High Court dismissed the appeal.
The campaign involved organising public meetings to raise awareness, postcard and letter writing, lobbying, occupying the head office of the Solid Energy, scaling a four-story building and blockading Solid Energy's coal trains. Members occupied an area adjacent to the proposed mine site.
The SHVC Save Happy Valley! Worth more than its weight in coal! leaflet describes the area as:
Happy Valley, in the Upper Waimangaroa, near Westport, is a stunning, wild and untouched landscape – home to 30 great spotted kiwi/roa and the rare Powelliphanta patrickensis snail. Eleven other endangered birds and animals inhabit this enclave of diversity. Happy Valley is a colourful mosaic of magnificent red tussock wetlands, low forests of lush mountain beech and dense mats of intricate herbfield plants scattered over striking sandstone rocks and bluffs.
The proposed mine site is located at Happy Valley which is an unofficial locally used name for an area to the east of Waimangaroa. It is 25 kilometres north east of Westport. Reasons for the opposition to the mine include acid mine drainage, loss of kiwi, Powelliphanta snail and tussock habitat, and climate change due to the burning of the extracted coal.
At the nearby Mt Augustus, Solid Energy has pushed another 'absolutely protected' endemic snail species to the brink of extinction, and plan to mine its last remaining 4ha of habitat.[citation needed]Forest and Bird obtained a declaration in December 2005 that Solid Energy needed permission from the Ministers of Energy and Conservation to translocate the snails before mining. This permission was granted in April 2006.[3]
The Save Happy Valley Coalition released a press statement stating they were 'appalled' at the decision. A spokesperson stated that it was 'New Zealand's first state-sponsored species extinction' and that Chris Carter, the Minister of Conservation at that time, had bowed to pressure from Solid Energy and had ignored consistent advice from the Department of Conservation.[4]
The Save Happy Valley Coalition Inc has since taken Solid Energy to the High Court, and sought a Judicial Review of the Ministers' decision. In March 2007, the High Court did not uphold the review and it awarded costs of $5760 to Solid Energy.[5]
In 2007 individuals involved with the Save Happy Valley Coalition were targeted in a series of contentious anti-terror raids.
In October 2012 Solid Energy announced that work on the proposed mine at Happy Valley would be delayed.[6]
On 12 June 2013, The Biodiversity Defence Society filed proceedings with the Environment Court, arguing that Solid Energy no longer holds resource consents for its proposed mine at Happy Valley, due to the expiry of the allocated time period of the consent.[7] In 2014 much of the targeted area was bulldozed in order to make way for mining despite the low price of coal and low return on investment.[8]
Surveillance
In April 2008, the Sunday Star Times reported that Gavin Clark of the Auckland private investigation company, Thompson and Clark Investigations (TCIL), had offered a Christchurch man, Rob Gilchrist, $500 a week to inform on the Save Happy Valley Campaign, for the benefit of the state-owned coal company Solid Energy.[9] In December of the same year Gilchrist was revealed to be a police informant and had infiltrated a number of activist organisations, including SHVC.[10][11]
Paparoa National Park is on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand.
This is a timeline of environmental history of New Zealand. It includes notable events affecting the natural environment of New Zealand as a result of human activity.
Buller Conservation Group is a registered incorporated society and an environmental organisation active on the West Coast of New Zealand.
Denniston is a small settlement, 15 kilometres east of Westport, on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is situated on the Denniston Plateau, 600 metres (2,000 ft) above sea level in the Papahaua Ranges.
Waimangaroa is a small town located on the West Coast of New Zealand.
Marsden B was an unused 250 MW oil-fired power station near the Marsden Point Oil Refinery at Marsden Point, Ruakaka, Northland, New Zealand. Due to rising oil prices, the plant was mothballed in 1978 without ever being commissioned. The Marsden site also includes the Marsden A power station, now a synchronous compensation facility owned and operated by Mercury Energy.
Solid Energy was the largest coal mining company in New Zealand and is a state owned enterprise of the New Zealand Government.
Powelliphanta augusta or the Mount Augustus snail, previously provisionally known as Powelliphanta "Augustus", is a species of large, carnivorous land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc in the family Rhytididae. Naturally occurring only on Mount Augustus near Westport on New Zealand's South Island, their entire habitat was destroyed by coal mining. The world population was taken into captivity, in theory until their habitat was restored and they could be released. The mining company concerned went bankrupt and habitat restoration has been unsuccessful, so the species' future is uncertain.
Powelliphanta patrickensis is a species of large, carnivorous land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc in the family Rhytididae. This species is endemic to the South Island of New Zealand. Formerly, it was considered as a subspecies of Powelliphanta rossiana.
The Seddonville Branch, later truncated as the Ngākawau Branch, is a branch line railway in the West Coast region of New Zealand's South Island. Construction began in 1874 and it reached its terminus at the Mokihinui Mine just beyond Seddonville in 1895. In 1981 it was closed past Ngākawau and effectively became an extension of the Stillwater–Westport Line, since formalised as the Stillwater–Ngākawau Line.
Seddonville is a lightly populated locality on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. It is most famous for the historical role it played in New Zealand's coal mining industry.
The Cypress Mine is a proposed extension to the open cast coal mine the Stockton Mine’s operational area, to the east into the Upper Waimangaroa Mining Permit area, on the West Coast of New Zealand.
The Mokihinui Hydro was a proposed hydroelectric dam and power station planned for conservation land on the Mōkihinui River on the West Coast of New Zealand. The project by Meridian Energy was expected to cost $300 million.
Mining in New Zealand began when the Māori quarried rock such as argillite in times prior to European colonisation. Mining by Europeans began in the latter half of the 19th century.
The Ngakawau Restoration Project is a proposed hydro scheme planned to divert acid mine drainage from coal mines to an ocean outfall to restore water quality of the Ngākawau River, in the northern section of the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. The project is a configuration of the Stockton Plateau Hydro Scheme being developed by Hydro Developments (2013) Limited. Project information can be found at https://hydrodevelopments.co.nz
Stockton Mine, on the Stockton Coal Field, is New Zealand's largest opencast mining operation. The entrance to the mine is at the former settlement of Stockton.
Denniston Plateau is an 18 km long, 600–800 m high coalfield plateau in the Papahaua Range on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. A combination of impermeable rock, high rainfall, and shallow acidic soil has created a unique ecosystem of stunted trees and heath-like vegetation which is home to numerous endemic and undescribed species of plants and invertebrates. The plateau contains rich seams of high-quality coal, which led to the creation and abandonment of the mining towns of Denniston and Millerton, and the current Stockton Mine. Plans to create a new open-cast mine on the southern part of the plateau have become an environmental controversy.
The Escarpment Mine Project is an opencast coal mine at the Mount Rochfort Conservation Area on the Denniston Plateau on the West Coast of New Zealand in the vicinity of the disused Escarpment Mine. Bathurst Resources Limited intended to extract and export between one and four million tonnes of coal a year from open cast mining in an area of 200 hectares of conservation land on the southern Denniston Plateau. The mine would be the second largest opencast coal mine in New Zealand after Solid Energy's Stockton Mine on the Stockton Plateau. Environmental groups such as Forest and Bird and the West Coast Environment Network opposed the project.
The Mt William North Mining Project is a proposed coal mine planned for the West Coast Region of New Zealand.
Victoria Forest Park, is situated on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. At 2,069 square kilometres (799 sq mi) it is New Zealand's largest forest park. The park is administered by the Department of Conservation (DOC).
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