Forest & Bird wants a major West Coast coal expansion rejected over risks to native wildlife, while Buller leaders warn that hundreds of local jobs are tied to the mine. The EPA has not rejected or approved the proposal. It has stopped the clock and asked Bathurst Resources for more information.
Report by eLocal
The argument over coal mining on the Buller Plateaux presents New Zealand with a familiar conflict, but on an unusually large scale.
Bathurst Resources is seeking approval to continue and expand mining across the Stockton and Denniston plateaux on the West Coast. According to the Government's official Fast-track project record, the Buller Plateaux Continuation project could enable the extraction of approximately another 20 million tonnes of coal over 25 years.
The proposal includes new and continuing mining operations, roads and transport infrastructure, water management, treatment of historic and future acid mine drainage, biodiversity measures and eventual rehabilitation and closure of mining areas.
But the application has encountered another hurdle.
The Environmental Protection Authority requested further information from Bathurst on 11 September, suspending the statutory assessment timeframe while that information is provided. The issue is therefore not, at this stage, an EPA decision for or against the mine. It is whether the application contains enough information for the approval process to continue.
That distinction matters.
Forest & Bird Wants the Application Rejected
RNZ reports that Forest & Bird is calling for the project to be declined, citing concerns about wildlife protection and shortcomings it sees in Bathurst's conservation plans.
Regional conservation manager Scott Burnett highlighted proposed management of protected lizards and the avatar moth, a species found on the Denniston Plateau.
Burnett told RNZ that Department of Conservation best practice aims to salvage more than 80 percent of lizards before development at a site, whereas he said Bathurst's application anticipates that fewer than one percent could feasibly be salvaged.
He also pointed to the avatar moth, whose known habitat overlaps parts of the proposed mining footprint.
The avatar moth is among the species at the centre of concerns about the Denniston Plateau. Photo: Brian Patrick, CC BY 4.0
Forest & Bird's position is straightforward: it wants the application declined.
But that is not the only interest the decision-makers are being asked to consider.
Hundreds of Jobs Are Also Part of the Equation
Buller District Mayor Chris Russell supports the application, while also saying its environmental effects must be properly examined.
He told RNZ that ecology, water quality, acid mine drainage, rehabilitation and the project's long-term obligations all require proper testing.
At the same time, Russell said the economic and social consequences of closing mining operations deserve equivalent consideration.
He said approximately 390 jobs would be maintained by the project, with the overwhelming majority of those workers living in Buller.
That makes this more than an abstract argument about coal.
Mining wages circulate through households, shops, contractors and other businesses. A large industrial employer can have an economic significance to a small regional community far beyond its direct payroll.
MBIE briefing material prepared in 2025 described Stockton as the largest employer in the Buller District, then employing an estimated 280 staff.
Forest & Bird rejects the idea that the decision should be reduced to jobs versus nature. Burnett argues that dependence upon environmentally damaging employment reflects a wider failure to create alternative economic opportunities.
That is a legitimate policy argument.
It does not, however, make the existing jobs disappear.
What Is the Coal Actually Used For?
The type and destination of the coal are also important.
New Zealand coal is not one uniform commodity with one purpose. MBIE's energy statistics distinguish between different coal grades and uses.
West Coast production includes high-quality bituminous coal, much of which is exported. New Zealand's coal exports increased substantially in 2025 following the reopening of the Tawhai Tunnel, which restored an important transport route between West Coast mines and export markets.
Coal also continues to have domestic industrial uses.
At Huntly Power Station, coal can be burned to generate electricity. At Glenbrook steel mill, coal is used as a reducing agent in the chemical process that converts ironsand into metallic iron.
The Buller project therefore sits inside a larger question about New Zealand's relationship with extractive industries.
New Zealand can restrict domestic mining. That does not necessarily eliminate international demand for the underlying mineral.
The environmental question is consequently more complicated than whether coal is mined in Buller.
It includes what type of coal is being produced, what it is used for, whether another producer would replace it if New Zealand withdrew from the market, and what environmental standards would apply to production elsewhere.
None of those questions removes the environmental consequences of mining the Buller Plateaux.
But they are relevant when assessing the actual consequences of approving or declining the project.
The Environmental Risks Are Real
The ecological issues cannot simply be dismissed because the project creates employment.
The official application contains extensive assessments covering terrestrial ecology, snails, aquatic ecology, water quality, acid mine drainage, hydrology, rehabilitation, biodiversity, greenhouse gases and mine closure.
That volume of documentation does not itself establish that the environmental effects are acceptable.
It demonstrates how many effects require assessment.
Acid mine drainage is particularly important because mining can create liabilities that persist long after coal extraction stops. The project's official description specifically includes treatment of both historic and future acid mine drainage.
Wildlife presents another problem.
If habitat occupied by a species with an extremely restricted range is permanently destroyed, rehabilitation somewhere else may not recreate what was lost.
Those are precisely the issues an environmental approval process should test.
Who Pays When the Mine Eventually Closes?
Forest & Bird raises another issue that deserves scrutiny independent of the debate over coal itself: who carries the long-term financial liability?
Mining projects eventually close.
Rehabilitation, contaminated water treatment, erosion control and other environmental obligations can continue after commercial extraction ends.
The Buller application contains proposed rehabilitation and closure conditions, water-management plans and material dealing with financial bonding.
The important question for New Zealanders is whether those arrangements are sufficient to ensure the costs remain with the operator rather than eventually moving to taxpayers.
That principle can be separated from the argument over whether the mine should proceed.
If a private company receives the commercial benefit of extracting a publicly controlled mineral resource, the financial structure should be capable of meeting the environmental obligations created by that activity.
Any approval should therefore be judged not merely by promises of rehabilitation, but by whether those obligations are measurable, enforceable and financially secured over the period in which liabilities could arise.
Fast Track Does Not Mean No Scrutiny
The latest EPA action is also significant for the wider argument over New Zealand's Fast-track Approvals regime.
Critics have argued that fast tracking major developments could weaken environmental scrutiny.
Yet in this case the EPA has identified information it considers necessary and has stopped the statutory clock while seeking it.
Forest & Bird itself acknowledged this point, with Burnett telling RNZ that, despite the organisation's broader objections to fast tracking, the request for additional information was an example of the process operating as intended.
The eventual decision will provide a much more meaningful test.
A faster approval system can still require rigorous evidence. The question is whether environmental effects are genuinely tested and enforceable conditions imposed where necessary, rather than whether the calendar moves more quickly.
What Would Make New Zealand Stronger?
Will this in fact make New Zealand stronger? The answer cannot be determined simply by choosing between the words "jobs" and "environment".
New Zealand benefits from productive industries, export earnings, skilled regional employment and the ability to develop its own natural resources.
It also benefits from protecting rare native species, maintaining clean waterways and ensuring environmental liabilities are not transferred from private operators to future taxpayers.
A strong regulatory system should be capable of testing both.
For the Buller Plateaux project, that means establishing the actual ecological consequences, determining whether threatened species can genuinely be protected, independently testing water and acid-mine-drainage risks, requiring credible rehabilitation, and ensuring sufficient financial security exists for long-term liabilities.
It also means measuring what declining the project would actually do to Buller.
If hundreds of well-paid regional jobs would disappear, policymakers should quantify that consequence rather than treating it as incidental. If equivalent economic activity is expected to replace mining, the evidence for that expectation should also be visible.
Conversely, economic benefits should not become an automatic licence to impose environmental costs that cannot realistically be repaired.
The EPA's request for more information is therefore not evidence that the mine should be approved or declined.
It is evidence that important questions remain unanswered.
For a project proposing another 25 years of mining and approximately 20 million tonnes of coal extraction, answering them properly is exactly what the approval process is supposed to do.
Source
Based on reporting by Felix Walton for RNZ, with additional information from the New Zealand Fast-track Approvals project record, the Buller Plateaux substantive application and MBIE Energy in New Zealand.