Stockton, New Zealand

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Part of the Stockton Opencast Mine.

Stockton is a small settlement in the northwestern South Island of New Zealand in the West Coast region. It is located in the Papahaua Ranges about 30 kilometres linear distance north east from Westport. When driving to Stockton from SH67, you pass through the former mining town of Millerton, where mining operations have stopped.

Stockton is best known for the Stockton Coal Field, New Zealand's largest opencast mining operation. ^[1] The mine is operated by Solid Energy, who obtained the Stockton Coal Mining Licence (CML) in 1987 for a period of 40 years. The coal field is situated between 5 to 10 kilometres linear distance south west of Stockton. The southernmost part of the coal field is only 5km away from the historic mining town of Denniston. The elevation of the coal field varies between 500 and 1100m above sea level.

The extracted coal is transported from the mine to an aerial ropeway near Stockton. The coal is transported to Ngakawau 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 Japan, India, China, South Africa and Brazil. Parcels of coal are barged from Westport to Port Kembla, New South Wales in Australia.^[2]

While the Stockton mining has created local jobs, the environmental impact has created some resistance against extending the operation to include the proposed Cypress mine at Happy Valley. This led to the formation of the Save Happy Valley Campaign (SHVC). The planned extension was halted when the rare indigenous Powelliphanta snail was found on the 2310 hectares covered by the CML. The views of Solid Energy can be found online [1], [2], as can the views of SHVC [3].

Coordinates: 41°38′S, 171°54′E