LOG SNAGS IN RIVER

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 60, 8 April 1946, Page 5

LOG SNAGS IN RIVER

MENACE IN RANGITAIKI

URGENT NEED FOR REMOVAL With the level of the water in the Rangitaiki River now at a lower ebb than it has been for many years, farmers on properties adjoining the banks between Te Teko and Thornton point out that substantial totara, and other logs, are now lying exposed in the bed of the river, and that the present time offers on excellent opportunity for their removal.

The logs* in many instances* are sixty and seventy feet long, and fully six foot through. From a milling proposition viewpoint, the scheme for removal should address- itself to timber millers in this locality. The main danger, however,, of the. presv ence of the waterlogged trunks in the river channel,, lies in their potential danger as a series of dams across the river over a length of land were flooding, has constantly threatened. The strange feature about the position occupied hy most of thisheavy timber is that invariably they lie crosswise to: the channel,, thereby deflecting, the main-, current: of water,, and causing; serious, erosion on the. opposite bank. It is apparent that at one time the whole of the plain wascovered by a substantially timberedforest, which, through some, natural upheaval lay submerged under a heavy bed of sand and- rubble: The trees occur in alternate layers, and 1 have for centuries, obstructed theriver in its free flow across: the plains to the sea. From a national point of view, the task of removing the heavy trunks is necessarily one for the Government, and representations to this end should be carried out by the existing Drainage Committee already constituted on. the Rangitaiki. The matter is urgent, and demands immediate representations if the settlers are to benefit, and be afforded this added safeguard against flooding, before the winter sets in.