Campaigners are elated after the controversial gold mining application for Sams Creek in Golden Bay was declined.
Australian mining company Siren Gold announced on Wednesday afternoon that its application to New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals (NZPAM) had been unsuccessful.
In its announcement, Siren Gold noted that its exploration permit had expired in March and that the mining application had been keeping its interest in the Sams Creek project live.
“The company is reviewing the decision and assessing the options available to it, including any potential right of appeal, following receipt of the decision.
“If the land becomes available for permitting again, the decision does not preclude the company from applying for a further permit.”
The development follows a pause in Siren Gold’s trading on the Australian Securities Exchange on Tuesday, which had been pending a further announcement.
The mining application has seen staunch opposition from the Golden Bay community, with many concerned about how mining would impact the nearby and tapu Te Waikoropupū Springs, which hold some of the clearest water in the world.
Local activists were overjoyed by the decision.
“I’m utterly elated. I’ve got tears very close,” said Save Our Springs coordinator Kevin Moran.
He said the application had been declined on the grounds that it didn’t reach the necessary legal threshold.
“It’s quite complex. In terms of saying it, there’s a whole lot of kind of background work that they needed to do and timing that it needs to be done within, and it wasn’t done in the correct way.”
NZPAM has been approached for comment.
Moran thanked the Golden Bay, Motueka, and wider Top of the South communities for their support.
“It’s been magnificent, and the huge amount of funding that’s gone into fund the application in the High Court – I don’t even know if that will go ahead now, we’ve got what we were asking for, so it’s just fantastic.”
Save Our Springs had been seeking judicial review over decisions relating to Siren Gold’s exploration permit and mining permit application by Resources Minister Shane Jones.
But now, Moran said that Siren Gold was essentially “gone”.
“They can’t go anywhere without a licence… Who knows? Someone might try and get a miner’s licence another way, but this one’s been declined.”
Save Our Springs would continue its work and campaigning against industrial mining and farming, he said.
“We’ve got to remain vigilant.”
Timothy Firkin is an independent documentarian who was part of a group of activists who occupied a drilling site at Sams Creek in March.
He said the decision was “great news”.
“To see that decision by NZPAM has gone in that direction, it feels like the culmination of a lot of hard work,” he said.
“As soon as we got word that exploration was about to begin, which was a few years ago now, we haven’t really had a day off.”
He was unsure if the decision was the “nail in the coffin” for Siren Gold’s presence at Sams Creek but said it left campaigners in a “pretty incredible spot”.
Firkin said the “next logical step” to see the land incorporated into the neighbouring Kahurangi National Park.
“It should have never been excluded from the national park to begin with.”
Axel Downward-Wilke, from the Sams Creek Collective, was “so relieved” by the NZPAM decision.
“We are going to have a big drink tonight,” he said.
“Golden Bay has just dodged a really big, dangerous bullet.”
His concerns specifically lay with a potential tailings dam being built in the area to store toxic arsenic byproducts from the mining process.
“They will not last forever, and so to put something in a… high-risk area, at Sams Creek, would have been crazy. I’m just so glad that this is now over.”
Downard-Wilke, also a member of the Golden Bay Community Board, acknowledged that some residents had supported the mine possibility, but thought that people would generally welcome the news.
“I was at the supermarket earlier today. I told a couple of people I knew there,” he said.
“They were absolutely ecstatic, high fives being exchanged.”
Like Firkin, he suggested that the land should be incorporated into Kahurangi National Park, or given to local iwi to safeguard.
Siren Gold have been approached for comment.
