A CANAL BANK.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 June 1919, Page 4

A CANAL BANK.

EXTRAORDINARY POSITION. A peculiar state of affairs has arisen in regard to the flood protective bank at the Waitepeka Canal, upon which the safety of the Otauomomo State Settlement depends (states the Balclntha “ Free Press ”). The hank was partly washed out by the flood of January last, and the Lands Department voted , towards its repair, the work to be done by the settlers under the supervision of the Public Works Department. ; Ou Tuesday of last week the settlers completed their task, aud ‘ on Wednesday a gang of railway . employers deliberately pulled the , bank down for a distance of half a ‘ chain, at a point where the protecj tive bank junctioned with the CatI bus railway line, thereby lessening | the height of the bauk by at least ‘ 4ft, and nullifying the work of the ! settlers, which had been approved by both the Lands Depart ment and the Public Works. The railwaymen, acting under instructions oi superiors, made their attack on the bank within the railway reserve alongside the line, aud the settlers could do nothing, not having been prepared for American methods, otherwise they might have gone armed with “guns” and stood the attackers off! Now the settlers maintain that if another big flood comes tlie settlement will be “ wide open ” to the waters from the Molyneux, with possibly disastrous results, and that this would not have been the case had their bank been allowed to stand at the height to which they had made it. This is the same bauk that in 1917 was cut by the railway people during a high flood, to safeguard the railway line, an action which has since been the subject ol a Supreme Court case that is still undecided, the Court of Appeal not having delivered its reserved judgment yet. This protective bank has twice previously been cut by tlie railway people during flood time and twice been repaired by them. Altogether our contemporary is credibly informed by settlers at Otanomomo, the bank has cost in repairs within the past lour years a sum ol about _£iooo. All this would have been obviated had a lock been erected at tlie mouth efthe canal (where it empties into the .Molyneux below Shaw’s property at Finegand) to keep out the waters of the big river in flood time. Tlie settlers’ protective bank and the railway line would both have been safeguarded in that way, and at comparatively small cost. A GILBERT lAN SYSTEM. In its leading columns of the same issue the “Free Press” had the following to say:—A situation which would have made a good subject for a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera lias developed within the week at a point on the Otanomomo swamp below Finegand, where the settlers of Otanomomo hid just finished repairing the celebrated Waitepeka Canal flood protective bank. ... It is becoming increasingly evident that the system of departmental control which exists in New Zealand to-day is not the ideal system fora country which desires to progress. It lends itself too readily to the farcical. Here we find three Government Departments concerned—two of them (the Lands Department and the Public Works Department) working in harmony in helping the State settlers to safeguard their holdings against flood damage, and a third department coming along and nullifying the protection afforded. This little bit of bauk has, another count in tlie indictment states, been the cause of the expenditure of yji.ooo ol public mid private money within the past four years, and the whole position could have been altered by the erection of a flood lock at the mouth of the canal, safeguarding both settlers and railway interests. We have heard a lot about “ efficiency ” during the war from the present Government, and surely it; is time the powers that be manifested a little of that efficiency in tlie conduct of their own business. If one department is to be permitted to expend public money and another department to deliberately run counter to that expenditure, then the poor unfortunate taxpayer has a right to demand “Why?” 11 is about all he can do.