Norwich bulletin., 1922-08-04
NORWICH TOWN PEAT MAY HELP
 SOLVE LOCAL FUEL PROBLEM


 Norwich manufacturers and household CTS may be able to partly solve the fuel problem with coal mined in this state, and with peat cut from peat hogs in this vicinity. It is not generally known that there are peat bogs in Norwich and vicin- lty. One of the peat bogs is located near Fairview reservoir and others are located inN, Ellington, Coventry and Columbia There are also one or two small veins of coal in this state which have been pros pected by paleontologists from Yale who have been searching for mammalian fos- sils. These veins, which are only few feet in thickness. have never been work ed commercially. Peat, which is found at numerous places in the state, also has a fuel value and during the Civil war. when prices were prohibitive. peat was an important Connecticut product, and many tons of it were shipped to New York and Boston
 There are peat bogs in Rockville, FL lington. Coventry, Meriden, Columbia and Norwich, and during the war these bogs were surveyed with the idea of the possi- ble use of peat as fuel then The sta- tistics on the peat supply in Connecticut are included in the data compiled by the war fuel administration which ias been l requested from Washington for use to the emergency fuel commission to super | wise the fuel consumption in the state during the strike of the miners
 {. Connecticut has a few outliers of the 1 coal formations of the Alleghanies and l there are other rock formations in the state which are coal bearing, for not all | of the coal deposits are found in the rocks of the carboniferous. age, with it's l great ferns and massive swamps, usually l considered as the coal forming age, found 1 n fOv~Fv7a ffrr, 7a1, l younger than the carboniferous. Roughly l there are six stages in coal forma tion. First there is the swamp in which the | vegetable matter collects and decays | then the peat bog, not as wet as the swamp. The pressure by changes in the earth's peat bog, if subject <s heat and great surface become bituminous coal and still more heat pressure will convert the bttuminous coal into anthracite. It is l estimated that it takes a peat bog about l 100 feet thick to make foot vein oi hard coal The final stage in coal is graphite, an amorphous substance which l is practically pure carbon. There arc important coal mines in Nova Scotia Geologically these two regions are simi lar to Connecticut.
 Rhode Island, in fact, Is now n1inin; coal near Providence and is t=Ining ou almost 1000 tons day from a mine a Cranston. The coal there is not as ire burning as the Pennsy1vaIIa varieties a i it-contains about 25. per cent of water
 but when used in the pea or chestnu
 sizes it gives a fire about as hot as tn Pennsylvania coal and burns longer.
 The coal mine at Cranston is just be
 low a valuable graphite deposit and ha ! been worked at intervals since the Brit ish troops occupied the state during tn
 Revolution, although it is only recent,
 that the burning properties of the coa
 there have been discovered The ln,ne
 no win charge of a mine boss iron Scranton and included in it's equipment i a $5O0,oO0 crusher.
 ] The mine has had a long and yarje. ; history and extensive mining operation
 were carried on about 1S40, the coal be ing sold in Providence and the coal dus being sold to brick makers of the neigh borhood and to others as far away a the Hudson valley. It was this bric dust angle of the business which inter ested Lucian B. Hanks of Hartford, wh bought the lease on the mine A 1S41. H
 ran the mine in very expensive man | ner- however, and became discouraged t allowing the mine to fill with water an g abandoning operations.