Sunday, November 06, 2016

New Zealand has an environmental court.

7 November 2016
Today, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (KASM), with the support of Ngāti Ruanui and Talleys Fisheries Group, will be asking the Environment Court to rule that seabed mining company Trans Tasman Resources (TTR), make public all of the information in its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed in the South Taranaki Bight.
The hundreds of pages of redactions include the details of the content of the seabed sediment in the Bight, and the modeling - and detail - of the sediment plume that would be spread across the Bight from seabed mining, as well as economic data.
TTR applied to the EPA for these documents to be redacted, and only able to be viewed if a party signs a confidentiality agreement that severely restricts distribution and discussion of the content and puts signatories at risk of civil and criminal penalties if they breach the agreement.
“We were forced to take our case to the Environment Court because the redacted documents provide crucial information about the potential environmental impact of digging up 50 million tonnes of the seabed a year for 35 years,” said Phil McCabe, KASM chairperson....
...“We believe that it’s only fair that people get a chance to read through this information, which may inform how they view the application,” said McCabe.

This video was three years ago.