Pike River mine to be sealed despite legal action from group of families

Monday, 28 June 2021

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

The Pike River mine will be sealed this week, despite families launching legal action against the move.

A group of 22 family members filed a judicial review earlier this month against the Government’s decision to seal the mine.

The Pike River Recovery Agency is planning to 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.

The group behind the court action does not want the mine sealed until evidence is recovered from the main ventilation fan, which sits 130 metres further into the mine workings.

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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.

Agency chief executive Dave Gawn said the process of the withdrawing from the mine drift started on Thursday.

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.

A team of miners recovered an area of the drift known as pit bottom in stone and removed all items for the police to forensically examine. It is known to hold electrical equipment which could hold clues as to how the explosion happened in the mine where 29 men were killed in 2010.

The team had begun withdrawing back to the 170m mark, Gawn said. A temporary seal would be put in at that point.

The seal consists of a built-in single steel door, surrounded by mesh which is then sprayed with a concrete product. Work on a second seal at 30m is expected to begin in August.

Gawn said families had been advised of the plans. The agency would not comment further on the High Court case, he said.

Thee agency is also helping police to drill six boreholes, 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. This will take place alongside the seal work.

The agency is expected to be disestablished by early 2022.

Bernie Monk, a spokesman for the group seeking the judicial review, said more papers would be filed in a bid to prevent the work going ahead pending the judicial review.

Lawyer Paddy Brand previously 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.

There were issues over consultation and transparency too, he said.

Outside the High Court on July 6, Monk said the Government should not stop now with only metres to go for the truth to be found.

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 first explosion in the mine.

Little has repeatedly stood by his decision made in March 2020 not to spend any more money on the project.

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.