MINING.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 April 1922, Page 1

MINING.

RIAIU FLAT OPERATIONS CRITICISED.

(Lyttelton Times.) The gold dredge that nas been placed by an American company on Rimu Flat near Hokitika, is working successfully and profitably. Earlier ate tempts to recover the alluvial gol from this flat failed, owing to the presence of many huge boulders, which could not be handled by an ordinary dredge. But the Americans have installed what is believed to be the biggest and most powerful machine of its kind in the world, and the winning of the gold that lies in the buried alluvial sand is proving a comparatively simple matter. > ' Incidentally, the company is stated by the local people to be destroying completely the best piece of agricultural land to be found in the neighbourhood of Hokitika. The Rimu Flat, denuded of its forest would have made excellent farm land but the big dredge is leaving behind it a chaotic mass of boulders, some of them many tons in weight. The surface soil is either buried or washed away, a nd it appears that when all the gold has been won there will remain a waste area incapable of growing trees or anything else. The gold will have been the first and last c i'°P- The State owns the land and critics have been asking why the Government has not required that the land should be left, in usable condition. The Minister of Alines (Mr Anderson), in reply to a question on the point, said it was quite true thftt the dredging operations on Rimu. Flatwere converting fertile land into waste of boulders. But the fault was not his The company (had got its license before he. became the head of the Department of Mines and the license did not make any provision for the saving of the land. The gold-bearing sands were some distance below the surface, anj in the process of their recovery the boulders were being brought to the top. Sluicing and gold dredging have destroyed considerable, areas of fertile land' in Westland, and Otago In past years. Gold dredging is an industry that really belongs to New Zealand, the process having been first developed in this country. The preservation of land has been insisted upon in some recent cases and it has been found practicable to save the surface soil and leave the land behind the dredge in as useful condition as It was before the search for the buried gold was undertaken...