A READER’S MEDLEY

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 101, 23 January 1935, Page 7

A READER’S MEDLEY

On Troubled Waters. A settler at Awapuni has reported to the Harbour Board the discovery of au oily patch in the sea one mile from the mouth of the Waipaoa river. It is apparently the result of an emission from the sea-bed, and .the settler is stated to have said that in the afternoon he heard two muffled explosions from that direction. What is the Harbour Board going to do about it? lam not sure if there aren’t stringent regulations about depositing oil within the three-mile limit, and there should be no defiance of the law merely because the offender happens to be Father Neptune. After all. the Harbour Board has nothing to fear in the enforcement of its regulations with fearless consistency. At least it is quite certain that the Marine Department will be gravely embarrassed if oily patches keep popping up round the coast, whether off the Waipaoa or in the middle of Cook Strait. If something is done, there may even be money in it. With so many oil prospectors scratching hopefully round in Gisborne and Taranaki, this submarine gusher may easily start a new boom. Divers may yet be staking claims on the Gisborne seabed, oil companies may yet be floated to peg out moorings off the Waipaoa river. The settler, at any rate, is to be commended for not losing his head under the circumstances. The report doesn’t state what he was doing one mile out to sea, but he njlfiht easily have become flustered and told the Hospital Board, or the County Council, or the Seamen’s Union. Like the Anderson’s Bay resident who saw a whale off St. Clair, lie might even have informed the police. (How would thev arrest a whale? Handcuff it?) But no, the resourceful settler of Awapuni went straight to the Harbour Board. And now. if the Harbour Board communicates with the Marine Department, and the Marine Department communicates with the Admiralty Hydrographer, international shipping may yet be warned of the location and extent of the danger zone. But by that time the oily patch will probably have disappeared; —D.G.