Development Of Buller

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32386, 27 August 1970, Page 14

Development Of Buller

Transport to and from the region has always been the main restriction on the growth of the Buller district. An economic survey of the region made by the Department of Industries and Commerce in 1963 recommended improved road access to Nelson; the report of the Buller Joint Committee (reported elsewhere in this issue) envisages harbour improvements to provide access for overseas shipping. The 1963 survey, in a prophetic passage, said: If. as seems likely, the North Island market for bituminous coal is reduced by competition from natural gas and oil fuel, the future main oulet for coal will be the South Island. Without new industrial uses for coal the least efficient West Coast mines will have to be closed. Insufficient attention, the survey said, had been paid to the natural resources of the Buller region other than coal, particularly the forests, fisheries, and farming lands. The joint committee’s proposals are more ambitious than the 1963 recommendations. They envisage substantial exports of coal, timber, and ilmenite, which would require the construction of a deep-water port. The Government's response to the committee’s submissions has been to announce the establishment of an inter-departmental committee to “ investigate, co-ordinate, and recommend on major “ developments, based on the use of the natural “ resources of coal, timber, and ilmenite on the West “ Coast, and the provision of the necessary services ”, This committee is sure to examine the Buller committee’s proposals closely—particularly the claim that exports of $45 million a year could be produced in the region. No estimate is given in the Buller committee’s report of the cost of providing harbour and other facilities required to handle these exports. The departmental committee will be expected to provide this information—and, no doubt, to estimate what a similar capital outlay anywhere else in the country could produce in the form of extra export receipts. If the Buller project shows prospects of equal returns on capital, it should receive the favourable consideration of the Government. Even if it should not appear, on economic criteria, to be the most rewarding capital investment of its kind available, it might still justify special consideration on social and political grounds. It cannot be good for New Zealand as a whole to let the West Coast drift into economic decay.