Opposition Groups
Concerns have been raised about the environmental performance of Solid Energy particularly at the Stockton Mine on the West Coast. In 2006, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment proposed to undertake a review of the environmental performance of the company in 2008.
Solid Energy has also been criticised by the Ngawakau Riverwatch group and environmental groups and organisations such as Greenpeace, Forest and Bird, The Buller Conservation Group and the Save Happy Valley Coalition. The criticisms include carbon emissions, environmental damage and greenwashing in respect of the impacts of mining.
Resource consents were granted to Solid Energy for the development and operation of the Cypress mine on land near Waimangaroa. This was opposed by the environmental group Save Happy Valley Campaign (SHVC). They claim that the mine will contribute to acid mine drainage, climate change and the possible extinction of a species of Powelliphanta snail.
On 27 May 2007, Sunday Star Times reported that Thompson and Clark Investigations Ltd, a security firm employed by Solid Energy, used private individuals to spy on SHVC. A second spying episode was alleged involving Thompson and Clark attempting to employ another spy to obtain information from SHVC. Solid Energy claimed that they had no knowledge of that instance of an attempt by Thompson and Clark to employ a spy.
Read more about this topic: Solid Energy
Famous quotes containing the words opposition and/or groups:
“The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“In properly organized groups no faith is required; what is required is simply a little trust and even that only for a little while, for the sooner a man begins to verify all he hears the better it is for him.”
—George Gurdjieff (c. 1877–1949)