History of Coal Mining - Belgium

Belgium

By 1830 when iron and later steel became important in Wallonia the Belgian coal industry had long been established, and used steam engines for pumping. The Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse, so coal was shipped downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta. The opening of the Saint-Quentin Canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris. The Belgian coalfield outcrops over most of its area, and the highly folded nature of the coal seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant. Deep mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small operations. There was a complex legal system for concessions, often multiple layers had different owners. Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper (thanks to the good pumping system). In 1790, the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters (720 ft). By 1856, the average depth in the Borinage was 361 meters (1,184 ft), and in 1866, 437 meters (1,434 ft) and some pits had reached down 700 to 900 meters (2,300 to 3,000 ft); one was 1,065 meters (3,494 ft) deep, probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time. Gas explosions were a serious problem, and Belgium had high coal miner fatality rates. By the late 19th century the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing some coal from the Ruhr. The discovery of coal in 1900 by Andre Dumont in the Campine basin in the Belgian Province Limburg, prompted entepreneurs from Liege to open coal mines, mainly producing coal for the steel industry. An announced reorganisation of the Belgian coal mines in 1965 resulted in strikes and a revolt which lead to the death of two coal miners in 1966 at the Zwartberg mine. Coal was mined in the Liege basin until 1980, in the Southern Wallonian basin until 1984, and in the Campine basin until 1992.