MINERS AND SETTLERS IN CONFLICT.

Otago Witness, Issue 1975, 26 September 1889, Page 1

MINERS AND SETTLERS IN CONFLICT.

The local grievance descanted upon by Mr Ohapple in another column of this issue is a fresh illustration of the difficulties which have always arisen from the impinging of agricultural settlement upon the areas which have come to be considered exclusively set apart for mining. There is a continual complaint by the miner that his interests are subordinated to those of the settler. He says that not only as settlement advances does it more and more circumscribe his field of operations, but absolutely closes the area still left by precluding him from obtaining an outlet for his waste material. It is not without a large amount of justification that the miner complains. The conditions of surface mining in this colony are such that not only does the miner use a stipulated area of land, in order that he may entirely destroy the surface in his task, but he must overflow the lower lands near him with such a deposition of tailings as to render it also useless, not to speak of the damage — from an agricultural point of view — which he does to the natural watercourses. Thus, a party of men may have a two-acre claim commanding a rich agricultural flat, and may — and it occurs every day — flood the lands below them with sludge, so as to make them entirely useless for any purpose. When the land below happens to have been bought and settled upon by someone, he naturally objects to having his property destroyed ; while if he gets an injunction against the miner, the latter complains, with quite as much reason, that his property is useless for want of an outlet for the waste material. Each has reason on his side. The farmer complains that he was pressingly invited to purchase the land, while the miner claims possession on the ground of discovery of the auriferous lands. The country wants both the miner and the farmer, and surely aome modus vivendi between them can be arranged. There is much rpason to believe that the large deposit of tailings on the low lying lands below sluicing claims is frequently wanton, and that the miner, from his commanding eminence, has assumed that he was " monarch of all he sur- " veyed." It would be well, were it possible, that the antagonism — which is, after all, more apparent than real — could be removed, and that some large nieasure could be devised whereby the auriferous lands could be utilised without detriment to the agricultural. Our correspondent points out that the injury of which he specially complains could have been avoided, and, without assuming that to have been the case in this particular instance, it seems clear that most of the.hyury complained of is inflicted under similar circumstances. The miner looks upon the farmer as an interloper, and the farmer upon the miner as a would-be monopolist. On the other hand, the miner sees in the advancing wave of settlement a gradual but sure restriction of his field of operations. Every miner, no matter how well he may be doing, has yet in his mind large possibilities of future exploitation} and he sees his field of search lessened in extent by every section which is alienated from the Grown, •ft ia true that the Grown does sell with the land the minerals which way be below its surface, but at tbe same time it hedges entry with such ' preliminary conditions as constitute an effectual barrier. Even leaseholders, °r those who have the control of reserves, as has been shovn recently *a the case of the Barewood

run, have the power of imposing conditions which many do not scruple to designate prohibitory. This question of mining on private propertyhas always been a burning one in such of the other colonies as have goldfields, but the other question of overflowing lands outside the claim proper is peculiar to New Zealand. It has never been fully provided for, because our mining laws are principally copies of the Victorian, and there the conditions which are frequent here have never arisen. Attempts have been made from time to time to cope with this difficulty, but they cannot be said to have resulted satisfactorily, because they were made to suit merely local circumstances, and lacked that eh ment of largeness which would make them uuiversally applicable. It is yet tiie case, for instance, that rivers on goldfields have not been proclaimed sludge channels, and the miners who use them for that purpose do so either by the forbearance of landholders, or at their own risk. The mining laws were consolidated in 1886, but consolidation, however much it might have simplified the law, did not contemplate advance, and mining is now advancing rapidly. Sluicing, that branch which is most destructive to lands adjacent to its operation, will not of course last for ever ; but it should be provided for without delay that the interests of the miner and his neighbour, the farmer, should both be conserved. There ia yet wanting in our mining legislation that scope and breadth of view which can reconcile apparently conflicting, but really similar interests.