OceanaGold | Waihi North Project | Recreation and tourism assessment 5 1 Executive Summary The current Waihi life of mine plan, owned and operated by OceanaGold (New Zealand) Ltd (OGNZL), including Project Martha, is to complete production by the end of 2030. Study work conducted between 2016 and 2020 identified opportunities to expand the Waihi operation to 2038 with: A new underground mine at Wharekirauponga (under Coromandel Forest Park), with associated surface infrastructure to be located on farmland (owned by OGNZL) at Willows Road, underground access to dual tunnels extending to the Wharekirauponga orebody, and a connecting tunnel from the dual tunnels to the existing Processing Plant at Waihi; A new open pit, the Gladstone Open Pit (GOP), located to the west of the existing Waihi operation’s Processing Plant, with associated works to afford conversion to a tailings storage facility on completion of mining; A temporary rock stack at Willows Road (the Willows Rock Stack) for the Wharekirauponga Underground Mine and a Northern Rock Stack (NRS) located near the existing Tailings Storage Facilities (TSFs) and Processing Plant; A new Tailings Storage Facility 3 (TSF3) located to the east of the existing tailings storage facilities; An upgrade of the existing Processing Plant; An upgrade of the existing Water Treatment Plant (WTP) to double its current treatment capacity; and Reconsenting of the existing treated water discharge consents and duplicating the existing diffusers within the bed of the Ohinemuri River. This report assesses the effects on recreation and tourism1 of relevant components of these proposals, specifically: Effects on recreation – mostly tramping and pig hunting – of the vent raises associated with the Wharekirauponga Underground Mine (WUG) and which are proposed to be located on unformed legal road within Coromandel Forest Park; The effects of the construction and operation of the GOP, NRS and TSF3 on publicly accessible reserve land nearby – mostly noise and landscape effects; and Effects on water contact recreation and fishing from treated water discharge into the Ohinemuri River. There are no effects of relevance to recreation from the formation of the Willows Rock Stack and surface facilities, and upgrade of the Processing Plant, and these elements of the project are not discussed further in this report. Other effects of these activities are assessed in separate technical reports (noise (Marshall Day 2022), landscape (Boffa Miskell 2022a) and ecology (Boffa Miskell 2022b)). 1.1 Wharekirauponga Underground Mine OGNZL is proposing to mine the Wharekirauponga orebody which lies under the southern end of the Coromandel Forest Park (Park) administered by the Department of Conservation (DOC). A tunnel portal is proposed to be located on private land owned by OGNZL to the south of the Park, and a series of ventilation raises (raises) will be constructed along the tunnel alignment to provide air 1 The terms ‘recreation’ and ‘tourism’ have similar meanings in terms of potential effects on the values of the study area, considering that the two activities differ only by tourists having spent at least one night away from home.
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