Adopting
environmentally acceptable practices in New Zealand is a
crucial requirement for mineral wealth development. Recent planned expansions in
the coal industry have increasingly placed mining in the media spotlight. A lack
of appropriate national environmental guidelines has resulted in inconsistent
responses and assessments of current and prospective mine sites. Such
inconsistencies have lead to delays in decisions on developing economic mineral
deposits that may have only minor short-term impacts, and have also allowed
unacceptable environmental management practices to continue
elsewhere.

A
research collaboration between CRL Energy, Landcare Research, University of Canterbury and University of Otago aims to provide regulator groups and
the mining industry with a unified approach to the requirements of the Resource
Management Act 1991, which is the legislation that predominantly drives the
nation's environmental policies and guidelines. The tangible outcome of this
research programme will be guidelines for an integrated decision-making
framework based upon robust multidisciplinary science. The result of this
unified process will facilitate the development of viable mineral deposits and
prevent excessive environmental impacts.

The
framework will be derived from a synthesis of four objectives. Objective 1
identifies potential water quality impact. This objective is based on a targeted
geochemical study of the lithology and waterways of the West Coast and
Southland. Objective 2 categorises the degree of impacts on the ecology of
receiving aquatic ecosystems and determines the processes that drive aquatic
ecosystem recovery. Objective 3 identifies best strategies to sufficiently
manage impacted ecosystems, and to prevent future unacceptable impacts.
Objective 4 combines the findings of Objectives 1 - 3 into a standard
decision-making framework. The development of this framework development will
include wide consultation with representatives of the mining industry and
regulator groups. It is anticipated that this multidisciplinary approach will
provide a robust and coherent, standardised system that will assist in achieving
industry and environmental targets.