Opposition
The Coromandel Watchdog lobby group has been active in lobbying against gold mining on the Coromandel Peninsula since the 1970s. It has recently begun to work against proposals to restart mining in some areas of the Coromandel which have been off-limits to mining for a long time, and has argued that any claim of "surgical" mining operations being possible is farcical, when one realises that even for such mining, roads would have to be built into the areas, ore processing plants constructed, as well as tailings and chemical byproducts of the ore separation process disposed off.
Sand mining from both beaches and the seabed has encountered opposition. Kiwis Against Seabed Mining, an environmental lobby group, formed when plans were revealed for the mining of the seabed off the West Coast of the North Island.
There are numerous coal mines on the West Coast of the South Island. The Cypress Mine, planned for the Westport area, is opposed by the Save Happy Valley Coalition due to effects on landscape values, biodiversity and climate change.
A speech by the Minister for Economic Development Gerry Brownlee to the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in August 2009 provoked a reaction from environmental groups. In the speech Brownlee announced a review of Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act. The Schedule lists conservation land such as national parks and reserves as off-limits to mining.
Read more about this topic: Mining In New Zealand
Famous quotes containing the word opposition:
“Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“A man with your experience in affairs must have seen cause to appreciate the futility of opposition to the moral sentiment. However feeble the sufferer and however great the oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the blow should recoil upon the aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and it cannot be withstood.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“My opposition [to interviews] lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)