FLOODING OF NEW COALMINE

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28260, 24 April 1957, Page 12

FLOODING OF NEW COALMINE

Remedial Work At Wangaloa (New Zealand Press Association) DUNEDIN, April 23. Grouting is being used, for probably the first time in a New Zealand coalmine, at Wangaloa, near Kaitangata, to arrest the flow of seepage water which recently flooded one drive and threatened another. Work in the new Wangaloa mine came to a standstill about three weeks ago when the two drives —heading down to a coal seam at 2500 ft—broke through into water-bearing strata. Water seeping through small fissures in the drive walls quickly banked up to a height of more than 200 ft in one shaft. It was just kept in check by an electric pump in the other drive. Mr N. S. Humphrey, superintendent of the New Zealand branch of a British cementation company, was called in, and on his advice a mixture of cement and water is being pumped at very high pressure into the fissures as far as 50ft back from the drive walls. The grouting, under the direction of Mr W. R. Sparrow—a graduate of the Otago School of Mines—is being confined to the* main drive, which has been cleared of water.

Heavy floodwater will have to be drawn off from the return airway drive before Mr Sparrow’s team of men can use the same method of grouting there to stem any further seepage. It is_ expected that it will take at least a week to dry this tunnel.