The catchment of the Waimea Creek and the nearby Kapitia Creek keep West Coast Regional Council monitoring staff busy with mine monitoring work with more than a dozen active gold mining operations within the area. Photo: Greymouth Star / Brendon McMahon
Compliance staff at West Coast Regional Council undertook 53 site visits during April.
These included six checks for resource consent monitoring purposes, mining compliance and bond releases (14), and 29 dairy farm visits.
Staff also visited four sites in response to complaints.
The compliance and enforcement report to the Resource Management Committee this week noted seven 'non-compliances' relating to various land-use activities; four of them related to gold mining.
Unusually, the council has withheld the location of one of those mine site complaints at this stage.
This followed a compliant about surface run-off water from the mine not being redirected and not reinstated to the original path allowed following rehabilitation work at a site.
"The miner originally redirected the surface runoff while rehabilitation work was carried out after a complaint about the discharge affecting a stock drinking water supply," compliance team leader Chris Barnes said.
However, consent conditions allowed the miner to make the diversion. When the council learned the diversion was still in place and approached the miner to remove it, they declined.
"The miner refused to carry this out as they have removed their machinery and only diverted the water for the complainant."
Enforcement action was still to be decided.
A Blue Spur gold miner was pinged for not carrying out rehabilitation work in the allowable timeframe, following a complaint from an adjoining landowner.
"The miner has put together a plan to carry out the work in the next month."
Unconsented work within a gold mining operation at Goldsborough was described as an 'incident' after council staff visiting the site found the mine had encroached on a stream where a 10m buffer was meant to be in place.
Material on other parts of the site also had the potential for erosion.
In an incident at a Kaniere mine site a compliance officer noticed a discoloured creek when passing the operation.
Water samples from the creek and from the mine operation discharge 500m away were found to be in breach of the consent conditions.
"Enforcement action has taken place by way of an infringement notice."
Meanwhile, a compliance officer found two bags of rubbish in the bed of Nelson Creek, under the State highway 7 bridge.
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