Plans For Survey In Manapouri Area

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29101, 13 January 1960, Page 10

Plans For Survey In Manapouri Area

(New Zeaiana Press Association)

INVERCARGILL, January 12. Preliminary survey work is to resume this month between the west arm of Lake Manapouri and Deep Cove, in Doubtful Sound, for Consolidated Zinc Proprietary, Ltd., which is interested in the power potential of Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau for an aluminium smelting industry. A private firm is to make a stadia traverse between the west arm and Deep Cove for Consolidated Zinc, and a party will move into the area on Friday. Men who were with the Consolidated Zinc geological party last year will move into the area in about a week to set up base camps for a continuation of the preliminary geological survey. The Lands and Survey Department has been instructed by the Ministry of Works to check levels, and a party will begin work about the end of this . month. The Invercargill firm of Williams and Moir, consulting engineers and surveyors, was advised only yesterday afternoon of the stadia traverse, which involves making accurate height fixes and positions. Mr R. Moir, who will carry out the surveying with Mr D. Millar, a Lands and Survey Department survey cadet, said today the job would take five to six weeks. Assisting them will be two deerstalkers. The party will work from a 20 chains to the inch contour map prepared by the aerial mapping branch of the Lands and Survey Department from photographs of the rugged country. Party’s Route From the head of Lake Manapouri, they will work up the existing track for about a mile and a half, then up the Mica Burn for about four miles and a half, and then to a small lake midway to Doubtful Sound. The party will then work back towards Manapouri from the Sound. The route taken will be approximately that of the proposed si»mile tunnel through the Fiordland mountains, and the survey will give Consolidated Zinc engineers an idea of the clearance the tunnel would have in a fad to the Sound. The tunnel is part of Uie scheme the company is examining at the invitation of the New Zealand government. The pro-

posal is for a powerhouse on the Manapouri side of the mountains below a shaft 600 feet deep from which the tunnel would fall.

In a telephone interview with the “Southland Times’’ today, Mr H. J. Evans, the New Zealand-born geologist who led last year's Consolidated Zinc survey, said from Melbourne that he would be spending about three months in the area to obtain “more basic data.”

The work about to begin was still preliminary, he said. He did not know when the detailed survey would begin, but thought it could follow on from the conclusion of the work he would resume soon.

The Lands and Survey Department’s chief surveyor in Invercargill (Mr H. M. Smith) said a party of about four men would work on checking levels. The main job would be to check the height above sea level of Lake Manapouri. There were some differences about the height of the lake, he said. These were no more than 10 feet. One map shows Manapouri as being 599 feet above sea level.

Mr Smith said the party would work around the track from the head of the lake to Deep Cove. Tide gauges were to be placed at Deep Cove, to determine the mean sea level there, and at the south-west arm of Lake Manapouri.