THE COAL COMMISSION.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 3 May 1901, Page 4

THE COAL COMMISSION.

[Per Press Association.]

Wellington, May 2,

Sir James Hector was further examined by the Coal Mines Commission this morning on the coal measures of the colony. The Commission put before him an estimate of the coal in Now Zealand appearing in the Mines Record and purporting to he made from figures supplied by Himself at the time those surveys were made. Said, Sir James, very few workings had been opened up and the estimates had to be very considerably modified. For safety’s sake he should divide them by two. In Mokau an immediate additional area had been discovered, but very little work had been done. His estimate of the Kawakawa leasehold was two and a half million tons, and of the Waikato 51 million tons.

Tho Chairman : 750,000 tons were taken from Kawakawa.

Sir James, continuing, said The coa' mines in New Zealand were in a totally different formation from the ordinary coal mines at home, and the rules and experience gained from the working of coal mines at Home could not be applied in this country. The estimate of the Brunner mine was fairly good of the part that had been worked, but the working had been stopped by faults, so that the estimate could not apply generally. At Mount liochester, in the Bullcr district, it was known from the first that it would be a difficult field to work on account of the faults, and that they would have to do a great deal of stone driving to connect one patch of coal with another. No one could have anticipated the remarkable faults of the Wallsend mine. The Chairman of the Commission stated that putting aside the Blackball mine, the only coal in that district at present known was about 200,000 tons estimated, to be available in the Brunner mine, On the one hand the Commission hud estimates of from 37,000,000 to 53,000,000 tons, and on the other hand they were told thac 200,000 would close the Brunner mine.

Sir James Hector said that in view of the faults it was very difficult to make a statement on the point desired by the Commissioners, but he had no doubt that the original estimates were much above tno mark. The £37,000,000 tons estimate included a large quantity of coal, supposed to exist in the Wallsend mine, in which the seams deteriorated at a depth and became mixed with stone. The area

of the coal measure* at Reefton was not property known. Tho Mokan case did not go very far north, but he believed it extended through to Tangarakau, in tho Wanganui district. On coming into the Waikato basin, beyond To Kuiti, coal was met with again, but brown coal was not equal to Mokau coal, which was an excellent seam of coal.