Escarpment Mine Project

The Escarpment Mine Project is a proposed opencast coal mine planned for the Mount Rochfort Conservation Area on the Denniston Plateau on the West Coast of New Zealand in the vicinity of the disused Escarpment Mine. Bathurst Resources Limited (through its subsidiary company Buller Coal Limited) intends to extract and export between one and four million tonnes of coal a year from open cast mining in an area of 200 hectares of conservation land on the southern Denniston Plateau. The proposed mine would be the second largest opencast coal mine in New Zealand after Solid Energy's on the Stockton Plateau. Environmental groups such as Forest and Bird and the West Coast Environment Network oppose the project.

In March 2010, the Perth-based coal company Bathurst Resources announced it was buying L&M Coal Holdings' hard-coking coal exploration assets and mining permit areas in the Buller District of the West Coast. In June 2010, Bathurst Resources announced plans to develop an opencast coking and thermal coal mine for exporting in 2011 in a joint venture with Christchurch-based company L&M. The proposal had an exploration target of between 17 and 23 million tonnes of coal in the Denniston area. In early September 2010, Bathurst Resources confirmed plans for a US$57 million hard coking coal opencast mine on the Denniston plateau above Westport. The plan included a slurry pipeline to carry coal down the steep plateau slope from a processing plant to a rail load-out 10 km from Westport. Managing Director Hamish Bohannan said a recent feasibility study had been definitive and had confirmed the technical and economic feasibility of the project.

In March 2012, Forest and Bird organised a bioblitz as part of their campaign against the mining project. In November 2012, Massey University scientist Steve Trewick said that a new species of cave weta had been identified in the March 2012 field-trip to the Denniston Plateau.

In September 2010, L&M Coal Limited applied for 24 resource consents for the Escarpment Mine Project from both the Buller District Council and West Coast Regional Council. Bathurst Resources Limited later purchased L&M Coal Limited and renamed it Buller Coal Limited. Bathurst also has to apply for and be granted an access agreement and a concession from the Department of Conservation to excavate the coal and to have a coal processing plant within a conservation area. Environmentalists have questioned the lack of ability to make public consultation on the application for an access agreement.

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