Pike River families launch court action against sealing of the mine

Friday, 4 June 2021

Pike River families have launched legal action against the Government’s decision to seal the mine.

Pike River families have launched urgent legal action against the Government’s decision to seal the mine and have warned that they won’t get tired of fighting.

Family members Bernie and Kath Monk, Steve and Carol Rose, and Cloe Nieper and her 12-year-old son Kalani travelled to Wellington to file a judicial review against the Government in the High Court on Friday.

The Pike River Recovery Agency is planning to seal the mine this month and hand the site over to the Department of Conservation for inclusion in the Paparoa National Park by November. It has completed a $50 million re-entry of the mine’s access tunnel, or drift, with the aim of recovering evidence to help a police criminal investigation.

A group representing 22 families do not want the mine sealed until evidence is recovered from the main ventilation fan, which sits 130 metres further into the mine workings.

* Pike River families blindsided by 'acceptance' of plan to end mine re-entry

Lawyer Paddy Brand and Bernie Monk give a press conference on the steps of the Wellington High Court after filing an application for a judicial review into stopping the sealing of the Pike River mine permanently.

* Pike River 'inherently' unstable and can't have unlimited budget - Andrew Little

Lawyer Paddy Brand said the legal action sought to review the decision to seal the mine along with other issues, including how the decision was made and whether the Government’s promises to the families had been kept.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister Responsible for Pike River Re-entry Andrew Little console family members at the entrance to the mine on May 3, 2019.

He said there were issues over consultation and transparency too.

No date is set for a hearing yet.

Brand said 22 of the families were involved and it was another step in their nearly 11 year journey.

Outside the High Court on Friday, family representative Bernie Monk said the Government should not stop now with only metres to go for the truth to be found.

Families gather for the 10th anniversary of the Pike River mine disaster at the Atarau memorial near Greymouth. (Video first published November 19, 2020)

He said there had been no consultation with the families, and they found out about sealing the mine from the media, which was crushing.

“There shouldn’t be any money involved in this, we are not the villains, we deserve the truth.”

Monk said he wasn’t tired of fighting and the Government’s decision was worth challenging,

“Don’t think the families are going to go away,” he said.

Pike River Recovery chief executive Dave Gawn has told the Government the families’ experts have underestimated the time and cost of recovering the main ventilation fan from the mine.

He said he admired their tenacity.

Monk said he had written to Minister Responsible for Pike River Re-entry Andrew Little three times but had not once received a response.

The families presented the Government with a concept plan, developed by a group of mining experts, that said it would cost $8m and take 12 weeks using standard mining techniques to recover the fan. The experts said the fan was a likely cause of the explosion in the mine where 29 men were killed in 2010.

The Pike River mine will be sealed and handed over to the Department of Conservation for inclusion in the Paparoa National Park.

Little has repeatedly stood by his decision made in March 2020 not to spend any more money on the project. On Friday, he said it would be inappropriate to comment to due the intended legal action.

The agency told the Government the plan was technically feasible, but it would cost up to $25m and take 10 months to recover the fan by tunnelling through a 30m roof fall.

A statement by the families’ group said they did not expect a “blank cheque”.

“That said, early on the police advised that they were treating this investigation as a 29-man homicide. Never before has the New Zealand justice system been subjected to arbitrary fiscal restraints in this way.”

They said the experts who wrote the families' plan were the same advisers who wrote the drift re-entry plan. They used data provided by the agency to cost the plan.

“Little has rejected the families’ plan without engaging or consulting with them or their technical advisers. He made no contact. As well as being a breach of the Government’s commitments to the families, it is disappointing and has caused them further pain, given they took the Government at its word.”

In a briefing to Little, chief executive Dave Gawn said the agency had already spent $48.4m of its $53m budget to recover the 2.3-kilometre drift.

Progressing the families’ plan would have involved another risk assessment and submission to WorkSafe for an extended exemption from the requirement to have a second means of escape from the mine. Detailed ventilation, geotechnical, tunnelling and drilling plans would also be needed.

Gawn said the agency was helping the police to drill six boreholes at a cost of $3m from police budget, including one in the fan area that could corroborate or discount the possible causes of the explosion that were listed by the royal commission into the disaster.

“From a health and safety perspective, the borehole option is the optimal [one],” he said.

Little previously said recovering the mine beyond the drift was not in the agency’s terms of reference.

“The Government has fulfilled its commitment to the Pike River families – that is to safely recover the Pike River Mine drift. The forensic examination continues.”

The project had taken longer and cost more than expected, he said.

“There has never been a blank cheque.”

The families have also launched a petition appealing to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to keep going into the mine.