THE DAMAGE OF THE STREETS.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2477, 15 March 1882, Page 3

THE DAMAGE OF THE STREETS.

“We are glad to notice that attention has at last been drawn to the damage which is daily being done by the contractors of the Drainage Board to our streets. Every street in the city within the belts has been ent np and rendered almost unfit for traffic by the laches of the contractors. Their end and aim in life seems to be so to strew barrels and timber in such a scientific manner as to ensure the coming to grief of anyone riding or driving along any of the streets where they are carrying on wort. But this, bad as it is, undoubtedly is not all. The citizens of Christchurch have been mulcted heavily for metalling the streets, an item which more than any other has tended to swell np the rate in past years. It now appears, so far as can he learnt, that the contractors, not content with otherwise spoiling the streets, cart off this very metal, leaving in its stead several inches deep of dust, which now, daring the summer, blows about in clouds, bat in winter will be converted into cheerful quagmires. We cannot but think that some steps should be taken by the City Council to prevent this. It is not only in one or two streets, but in several that what we have referred to takes place. An utter disregard of the property of the citizens seems to be a leading featnre in the administration of the officials of the Drainage Board, and wo cannot hut regard it as monstrous that a public body should stand by and see the roads and streets of the city utterly and completely spoiled, and the lives or limbs of the citizens endangered. With regard to the latter, the Drainage Board should close the streets for traffic wherein work is being done. If they do not, it is their duty, through the officers of the Board, to see that proper way is left for vehicles. Not only, we may say, are the roads cut np, but the sidewalks and channels damaged, so that altogether the city will find when the Drainage Board have done with the streets —whenever that period arrives—they will require to set about re-making them.