Activists are fighting to see hundreds of blacked-out pages of information about an application to mine ironsand from the Taranaki seabed.
Trans Tasman Resources is seeking consent to mine up to 66 square kilometres of Taranaki seabed. Photo: 123RF
Kiwis Against Seabed Mining is seeking a ruling in the Environment Court to make all of Trans Tasman Resources' marine consents application publicly available.
The consent, if granted, would allow Trans Tasman Resources to mine almost 66 square kilometres of seabed off the Taranaki coast.
The company lost an earlier attempt to get approval for this from the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), but it did not give up and has submitted a new application.
In that new application, it withheld some key information on commercial grounds, with the EPA endorsing the process.
Kiwis Against Seabed Mining then went to the Environment Court, saying that data should be released in the interests of the public.
The group was supported by Nelson-based fishing company Talley's.
Talley's lawyer, Robert Makgill, told the court today it was impossible to peer review claims made by Trans Tasman Resources because vital information was not being made available.
Mr Makgill gave an example, saying the company had pledged that a plume of silt stirred up by the mining operation would be smaller under the new proposal than it was originally expected to be.
But he asked the court how could that be checked via peer review if technical data was being kept secret.
Talley's has long feared that a plume of silt swirling through the water in the wake of a mining operation would harm fish habitats.
Earlier, Trans Tasman Resources counsel Mike Holm told the court his clients were withholding information for very good reasons.
He said the company was not trying to work in secret but was simply trying to protect economically valuable data.
Mr Holm told the court that material being redacted from company documents was technical data that would be of little interest to the layperson.
But he said it would be highly valuable to commercial competitors, and it was important not to prejudice Trans Tasman Resources' commercial interests.
A similar point was made by EPA counsel David Randal.
He said the authority had discretion under law to withhold information if it might prove prejudicial towards a company's commercial position.
That view was contested, however, by Duncan Currie, a lawyer for Kiwis Against Seabed Mining.
He said there had to be undue prejudice to a company for the rule quoted by Mr Randal to apply.
There was moreover a well established legal principle that strong public interest in a case could trump the interests of an applicant company, he said.
Mr Currie went on to say Trans Tasman Resources had protected the confidentiality of its documents by making anyone wanting to see them sign letters of confidentiality.
These were intimidating and one-sided documents, he said, which were enforced with a penalty and deterred many people who needed to see the information from being willing to sign them in the first place.
A South Taranaki iwi, Ngāti Ruanui, also opposes the mining project.
The merits of the scheme were not discussed at the latest hearing.
But Trans Tasman Resources has earlier said the project that would create 1600 jobs, 700 of them locally, and would generate exports worth over $300 million a year.