As some of you are aware I operate a claim on the Kyeburn river at Danseys Pass along with Webby who is also on this forum and some others. This is a schedule 7 river and it is sensitive to suction dredging due to its native fish populations. This river also produces a lot of sediment from the unique geology of the area when one is operating a dredge.
Basically in order to mine legally we we had to obtain a resource consent so as to allow dredging and also a longer sediment discharge within the water column. It was at this point I approached Darryl who goes by the name of Mangrove here on the forums. He put my mind at ease and we got Darryl to navigate and prepare a resource consent. We thought this would be a relatively simple process as we had to get approval from, ORC, Fish and Game, Local Iwi and DOC.
Well - I was skeptical but we had a great experience with ORC who were very supportive and came out for a number of site visits. They were practical and helped us navigate the process and offered pragmatic solutions to keep costs down. I know its easy to bag these guys but seriously if you approach it the right way and work with them then your more likely to obtain what your after.
Fish and Game were supportive of what we were doing and also Local Iwi. At this stage we just had to get approval from DOC and we were away all good to go. By this stage the consent was a non notified consent.
This is where the story takes a turn for the worse- DOC came back with and did not support our stance and highlighted a number of issues around, Galaxiids, Heritage values, sediment etc etc.
We tried to work with them and offer once again common sense solutions and they didn’t want a bar of it. They had their lawyer, freshwater ecologist and archeological expert try and shut us down. It was classic smoke and mirrors , come out guns blazing tactic trying to scare us off.
I dont like to loose and Darryl and I and the rest of the team knew the way to beat this was to remain steadfast, have faith in the process with the assumption that justice will prevail and rely on sound science and our ability to be like a dog with a bone.
This meant we forced the process it what is called a notified hearing. This allows all parties to make a submission and a commissioner from the ORC would make the final decision. The date was set and we all made our way to Dunedin to argue it out and stick it to DOC.
For those of you who are interested Im happy to provide what sort of evidence we used to obtain the outcome we got as im trying to keep this short and sweet. The outcome was DOC got made to look like a bunch of fools and ORC own fresh water ecologist who is highly regarded came to the party and was highly supportive of our stance and shot DOC down. The commissioner agreed in our favor and granted our resource consent with conditions we agreed on. happy to say we start dredging next week. Total time taken was over the winter period so it didn’t really affect our season to much.
It did cost us a lot of money but it does make our claim more valuable and we dont have to worry about looking over our shoulders.
The end result f this is there were a number of other resource consents for suction dredging in Otago during our hearing which has paved the way for ORC now ignoring DOCs submissions in effect and DOC now pulling the pin on their own submissions.
It has also meant a certain local Iwi for a lot of the guys in the Clutha catchment now changing their tune and withdrawing and opposing submissions. Im sure Darryl can further comment on this as hes over this more than me
Big shout out to Mangrove , he is the man . Anyone who needs to get a resource consent I recommend him to all my gold mining mates. He is also a dredger himself so he understands the gold fever and why we do what we do.
Very good result guys. Well done. Would that be Allan Dunfords old claim? Wishing you the best of returns.
, Top bloke .