Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 1901. HARBOR EXTENSION.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 11 June 1901, Page 2

Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 1901. HARBOR EXTENSION.

The letter from the Marine Department to the Greymouth Harbor Board last night, objecting to Mr Napier Boll’s plans for further improvement of the Greymouth harbor, came in the nature of a surprise, and will require some explanation. It will be remembered that Mr Bell was employed at the request of the Government to prepare plans for this work, and it was, naturally enough, supposed that the Marine Department was prepared to accept the opinion of their own specialist in preference to that of Mr Hales, whose experience of harbor works is of a very limited character. And it is possible that the Department may yet accept Mr Bell’s plans. However, in the meantime, Mr Halos, Marine Engineer, puts forth his opinion, which he states is based on somewhat extended observations of the action of the seas and currents as well as the effect of training walls constructed in the rivers at Greymouth and Westport, and to put it mildly declares that Mr Bell’s plans are faulty; are, in point of fact, calculated to do absolute injury to the port. It is just possible that underlying their criticism is a little professional jealousy, for in 1895 Messrs Bell and Hales reported jointly upon this same matter, and a paragraph in that report runs as follows “ The extension at the present width between the breakwater might make an unsafe entrance in rough weather, it would therefore be advisable to make the extension wider, say (650) six hundred and fifty feet between the centres; the length of the extension should be 560 feet at least, and even a little longer would tend to better preserve the depth just beyond the ends.” Now Mr Bell’s present ideas are a mere amp ifying of the above paragraph, yet Mr Hales cannot

agree with it. For laymen to express an opinion upon such subjects is regarded by “experts” as “ presumptuous ” and “ impertinent.” But a layman may surely point out wherein an engineer—even the chief engineer of New Zealand — shows inconsistency. No doubt the matter will be adjusted ; some trilling alteration may prove sufficient, just to show that Mr Hales as well as Mr Bell has had a hand in our harbor improvements. In the meantime work on the North wall has been discontinued.