Stockton Mine, on the Stockton Coal Field, is

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

's largest

opencast mining Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of mining ...

operation. The entrance to the mine is at the former settlement of Stockton.

Extent

The coal field is situated between 5 and 10 kilometres linear distance south west of Stockton. The southernmost part of the coal field is only 5 km away from the historic mining town of Denniston. The elevation of the coal field varies between 500 and 1100m above sea level. The Stockton coal field dips to the Northeast with approximately the same dip as the Denniston Coal Field, 15 km to the south. Both fields contain Bituminous Hard Coking Coal. The extracted coal is transported from the mine to an aerial ropeway near Stockton. The coal is transported to

Ngakawau Hector and Ngakawau are two lightly populated settlements located at the mouth of the Ngakawau River in the West Coast region of New Zealand. Both settlements are situated on State Highway 67 between Westport and Karamea. Despite a low populat ...

using this ropeway, doing away with the dangerous railway operation that plagued the Millerton and Denniston Inclines. From Ngakawau, most of the coal is transported by rail to Lyttelton, where it is exported via ship to steel makers in

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and

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. Parcels of coal are

barge Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels ...

d from Westport to

Port Kembla, New South Wales Port Kembla is a suburb of Wollongong 8 km south of the CBD and part of the Illawarra region of New South Wales. The suburb comprises a seaport, industrial complex (one of the largest in Australia), a small harbour foreshore nature reserve ...

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Stockton mine railway

The Stockton mine railway was, in 1908, New Zealand’s first electric railway. It carried coal from the Westport-Stockton Coal Companies mine to the NZR railhead at

on the West Coast of the South Island from 1908 to 1953, when it was replaced by an aerial cableway. The line was 10.5 km long, with 2.4 km in two long tunnels. The system used 275 v DC from a low overhead line via trolley poles, and 915 mm gauge track. The seven locos were of low built "mine" type.

Solid Energy collapse

The mine was operated by State-owned

Solid Energy Solid Energy was the largest coal mining company in New Zealand and is a state owned enterprise of the New Zealand Government. The company was formed from the former government department State Coal Mines. It was then established as a state ow ...

in a partnership agreement with Downer Australia. Solid Energy obtained the Stockton Coal Mining Licence (CML) in 1987 for a period of 40 years. in 2015, Solid Energy was placed into voluntary receivership. In 2016 Talley's, in a joint purchase with

Bathurst Resources Bathurst Resources, along with a number of subsidiaries, is a coal mining company in New Zealand that was established in 2010. Company history The company was originally based in Perth, Western Australia, and incorporated on 30 May 2007, listing ...

, announced they would purchase Stockton and the former Solid Energy mines at

Rotowaro Rotowaro was once a small coal mining township approximately 10 km west of Huntly in the Waikato region of New Zealand. The town was built especially for miners houses, but was entirely removed in the 1980s to make way for a large opencast ...

and

Maramarua Maramarua is a locality in the north-eastern part of the Waikato District of New Zealand. State Highway 2 runs through the settlement. Demographics Maramarua settlement is in an SA1 statistical area which covers . The SA1 area is part of the ...

. The sale, to BT Mining, went through in 2017.

Environmental effects

After concerns were raised about the environmental performance of Solid Energy, particularly at Stockton, in 2006, the

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment __NOTOC__ The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (''Te Kaitiaki Taiao a Te Whare Pāremata'' in Māori) is an independent Officer of the New Zealand Parliament appointed by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the House of R ...

proposed in 2008 to undertake a review of its environmental management. While the Stockton mining had created local jobs, the environmental impact has created some resistance against extending the operation to include the proposed

Cypress Mine The Cypress Mine is a proposed extension to the open cast coal mine the Stockton Mine’s operational area, to the east into the Upper Waimangaroa Mining Permit area, on the West Coast of New Zealand. In 2005, Solid Energy, a state owned ent ...

at Happy Valley. This led to the formation of the

Save Happy Valley Campaign The Save Happy Valley Coalition (SHVC) is an environmental activist movement formed with the express purpose of preventing the Cypress mine, an open cast coal mine on the West Coast of New Zealand, from proceeding. The Coalition is a member of ...

(SHVC). As a result of 120 years of mining on the plateau, Stockton produces about 15,000 tonnes of acid mine drainage a year, which costs $3 million to $3.5 million to treat annually. The drainage was expected to continue until about the year 2100, and the treatment costs were anticipated to increase when the mine eventually closed, with the Government total liability estimated at $83 million in 2020.

References

External links