THE IRRIGATION SCANDAL.

Evening Star, Issue 19792, 16 February 1928, Page 6

THE IRRIGATION SCANDAL.

Within the past few days the Prime Minister has announced that provision is being made to start 3,000 of the unemployed on Government works, of whom 2,000 will be placed in the North Island and 1,000 in the South Island. It is sincerely to be hoped that there is going to be no repetition in Otago of one of the latest instances of provision of work for the unemployed. For if there is such a repetition—and especially if labor is to be placed on one particular job on which work was not long ago suspended—further havoc will.be wrought in a district which some time since was successful in an application for the commencement of a big Government undertaking. That application was made in all good faith, but under a complete misapprehension. There were, in fact, two misapprehensions. The first was as to the degree of success—or failure—of a considerable portion of the Government’s irrigation schemes in Central Otago. The second misapprehension was as to the ability of the Public Works Department to handle any irrigation scheme beyond one of the most simple and elementary nature—one presenting no engineering difficulties greater than those familiar to the constructors of the mining races in days now moderately far back in Otago’s history.

The settlers who possess these private water rights, converted from mining to irrigation purposes, are the settlers to whom irrigation is an unqualified boon. They are doing well, practically without exception. But, if wo exclude Ida Valley (the Government's first irrigation scheme of consequence), there are numbers of settlers dependent on supplies of Government water who, having pinned their faith to the Government’s promises and the Government’s ability and genuine intention to carry out those promises, have been bitterly disillusioned. There are possibly not so many now as there were, because some of them are no longer settlers. They have “walked off,” ruinedfby expenditure on preparing ground and sowing seed and waiting for water which never came to enable the seed to germinate. In some cases their places have been taken by others, who have calculated on the Government’s officials not repeating past blunders. But some of these settlers, in turn, see no other prospect but of following their predecessors and “walking off” with nothing. There is now the imin'. lence of a second crop of ruined irrigators, if one can supply that term to men who have been “dry farming ” simply because, although on irrigable areas, water has not been available at all, or has been available in farcically n; adequate quantity, and then often far too late in the season, instead of in the vitally important spring time. Only lust week-end a representative of this paper saw water being applied to land for the first time this season instead of in September last, and it was not in one solitary instance.

Altogether on this visit protesting settlers on six distinct irrigation schemes (not all of them Government schemes) were interviewed, and in many cases visits to individual holdings were paid. The most painful case of all was where Government irrigation has brought face to face with imminent ruin a couple who had made so great a success of “dry grazing,” supplemented by a tiny private watei right, that they were in a position to retiro on a comfortable competency. Tins, however, must be told later in its proper place—ultimately, we hope, before the Royal Commission which is now being petitioned for. Readers of Dickens will remember the narrative which put Sam Weller to sleep on his first night in the debtors’ prison—tho story of the cobbler who was ruined and was immured in the Fleet prison through having a fortune left him. But this little tragedy on an irrigable area ought to have the reverse effect —that of waking up the people of Dunedin and of New Zealand to what is going on in Central Otago under tho name of irrigation. It has been going on for some time, but has been accentuated by a particularly hot, dry season, and by certain mishaps which those responsible would doubtless attribute to the “act of God.” Those on the spot who are sufferers, or observers with long and intimate knowledge of the country, and of race construction, both as it should be and as it has been under the Public Works Department, put it down to quite other reasons. Most extraordinary of all is the dilatoriness of those responsible in rectifying matters so that water may again flow in the races when every day of emptiness moans dead loss to those who need the water.

The fact is that a 4 the present moment the chickens as© comioft horns te

roost. Existing conditions are the result of years of blunders, beginning with inexpert designing, going on to faulty construction, and culminating to-day in an incompetent and autocratic administration which has provoked the victims to united action. This protest is being strongly and separately supported by those in the districts concerned, who, though not themselves settlers, know what the settlers are undergoing, the reasons for it, and the avoidability of it all. What we wish most strongly to emphasise in this and succeeding articles going more into detail is that the success of Central Otago depends on irrigation, but the provision of means to irrigate must be placed in competent and sympathetic hands. The marvel is that the faith of Central Otago residents in irrigation has not been destroyed by what they have been watching with increasing irritation for years past. That faith has not been destroyed, but the feeling uppermost at present is that an end must be summarily put to a policy and to methods which threaten to damn the very name of irrigation in the eyes of those who have hitherto been accustomed to accept departmental reports and Ministerial propaganda at their face value, and consequently have no inkling of the real position.