Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (KASM) and Forest and Bird have lodged separate appeals, and possibly more were expected from the commercial fishing industry and local iwi by yesterday’s 5pm deadline.
Trans Tasman wants to mine 50million tonnes of seabed annually, to extract 5million tonnes of ironsands, for 35 years. Its first application was turned down by the EPA.
KASM chairwoman Cindy Baxter believed the EPA has erred on a number of points of law and was "wrong in law as well as in principle".
The 15 KASM claims include the EPA having failed around use of the chair’s casting vote, inadequate environmental impact assessments, not applying caution and environmental protection and failing to take all cumulative mining effects into account.
Forest & Bird’s chief executive Kevin Hague said the EPA’s decision to grant consent failed to protect the environment, and did not meet the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) Act requirements.
The area was home to blue penguins, more than 30 marine mammal species, including critically endangered blue whales and Maui’s dolphins, and was a migratory corridor for humpback whales.
"The EEZ Act recognises that seabed mining could have significant impacts on the marine environment, and requires protection from such impacts," Mr Hague said.
The EPA’s decision-making committee was split. Two of the four dissented, saying they considered noise impacts on marine mammals a key concern, and "the information available extremely uncertain and inadequate".
