this might be bad, page-2

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350389822/strange-ohinemuri-river-turns-bright-orange-council-says-its-contaminated%EF%BB%BF.

Senior Incident Response Officer Robert Isaac said worst case scenario is the discoloured water was due to a mine shaft collapse, and old mines contain many heavy metals and contaminants

This is when making public your public 'thought farts' about dumping your tailings back down the shafts comes back to bite you. It wont take long lifor someone to link the two and delay it all whilst they investigate... there goes 6 months...