WATERWORKS ENGINEER

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 119, 17 February 1928, Page 10

WATERWORKS ENGINEER

Sir, —Municipal bodies often move in a mysterious w;ay. Within the next few days _ the AVellington City Council is to appoint a new waterworks engineer, vice Mr. J. M. Morice, and it has been said on more than one occasion that one of this officer’s tasks will be to carry out the new water supply scheme. The salary offered for this" position is <£7oo a year, and the person who receives it is expected to carry out on of the biggest things in water supply schemes that has yet been put forward in New Zealand —a scheme in its completion that will probably run into a sum exceeding £1,000,000. Yet the same council, which promises such a salary for a position, an item in which is a great work of the most vital moment to AVellington of the future, last year appointed a commission of' three of the best-known engineers in New Zealand to advise as to the best means of improved access to the eastern and western suburbs, questions which were settled by the late Mr. W. H. Morton before he died.

To inc it seems that the job of waterworks engineer means the work of superintending the water service of tho city day in and out, repairing breaks or leakages, running mains to new suburbs, replacing old services, and seeing that an adequate pressure is maintained in all mains ; but to ask a £70()-a-year man to report on a water supply scheme of tho magnitude hinted at recently, whilst an expensive commission is set up to teach the council what it should know best, seems, to say the least, to be somewhat inconsistent.—l am, etc., SOHO. Wellington, February 15.