ELUSIVE GRAVEL PIT.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 7

ELUSIVE GRAVEL PIT.

TAKEN FROM NATIVES.. ACTION FOR COMPENSATION. (From Our Own Correspondent.) TE KUITI, this day. A case of considerable public interest. in which two local bodies were interested, was heard before Judge C. E. MacCormick in the Native Land Court. The Waitonio County Council applied to the Court for assessment of compensation for land taken under the Public Works Act for 'a gravel pit. Although the land in dispute had been taken by proclamation order dated January 16, 1917, no move had been made in accordance with section 91 of the Native Land Act to have compensation assessed. The area comprises some three acres on the banks of the Waipa River, where there is an unlimited supply of reputedly fine building shingle. The native owners, resenting strongly the county's action, petitioned Parliament to have their land revested. They said they had suffered injury by severance through loss of riparian rights. The owners were dairying, their stock were without water, the County Council having taken all the river frontage to their holding. Neither the Waitomo nor the Otoro-. hanga County Councils opposed the petition? Eecently the matter was brought to a head bj r the native owners locking' the gate. The Waitomo Council then' instituted proceedings. The case is complicated owing to the river having changed its course, and some of the land taken has vanished by erosion; It was shown in evidence also that the shingle is difficult to estimate, large and fresh quantities being brought down the Waipa by each successive flood. Judge. MaeCormick, in reserving his decision, stated the Court could only taken into consideration the value of the land and the shingle at the date of the proclamation in 1917.