THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto: Public Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, & FRIDAY. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29, 1922. PROPOSED CONFERENCE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4396, 29 March 1922, Page 2

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto: Public Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, & FRIDAY. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29, 1922. PROPOSED CONFERENCE.

When dealing with the subject of the River Improvement Scheme, this journal has repeatedly stressed the injustice of a cosily project being carried out without those who will ultimately be asked to share a considerable portion of the burden of expense being informed of what works it was intended to proceed with, or their opinion asked as to the estimated cost thereof. The “Gazette” supports the\propdsal that a permanent body should be formed of engineers \ of the Public Works Department and qualified representatives of the farming, mining, and local body interests concerned. The Thames Valley Drainage ' Reference Board, which met at Paeroa on Monday (see report elsewhere inthis issue), did not go so far in the direction indicated as one would have liked that very representative body to go, but it did take a step which is decidedly in the right -direction when it resolved to request the Department. to meet, it in conference to discuss the whole scheme and the cost.

To those not fully familiar with River. Improvement Scheme history, some remarks made by Mr H. M. Wynyard (Auckland Chamber of Commerce), were most illuminating. This well-in-formed gentleman very pertinently pointed out that the 1919 Commission was set -up because .the . community objected to a proposal at that time to spend £650,000 on the scheme, and a Commission was appointed to devise some way of : obtaining satisfactory results by a lesser scheme. . This the 1919 Commission did, recommending that par-\ tial relief be given by the construction of low retaining walls and the dredging of the troublesome parts of. the river, so as to remove the impediments to navigation. The dredged. material was to be put behind the low stop-banks to buttress them. This lesser scheme, or partial relief, was roughly estimated to cost £50,000, but the Department has ignored the 1910, 1919, and 1921 Commissions’ recommendations with the .'utmost contumacy. £212,000 has been spent, but, to use the words of one report, the Department has done virtually nothing to improve the navigation of the river. It is now working bn a new scheme, which is to cost as much .as the old one that a royal commission was set up to have replaced, but the new scheme does not embody the recommendations of any commission. Truly, the Department must make a. quaint interpretation of the principles of democracy, or government of the people, by the people, for the people. It has spent the money taken from the mining industry specifically for the purpose of dredging the Ohinemuri and r stop-banking the upper reaches just above Paeroa, using it to protect Crown lands. And on. top of this misappropriation of- funds the contributors are to be taxed to an unbearable extent largely for the further protection of Crown Lands. The whole business reek's of insult and injury, and if a commercial firm (which the Department certainly is far from being) wererto carry on in a similarly immoral manner the principals thereof would assuredly be decorated with the sign of the broad arrow. One can well understand that the Minister for Public Works was astounded at the estimated co*st of the scheme. * However, if a conference is granted the community will at least have the satisfaction of knowing the reasons underlying the present seemingly inexplicable conduct of the Department. In a work of such scope it is inevitable that certain aeras must suffei- temporarily, but the unfortunate landholders might take, heart of -grace if they could be assured that the scheme would be completed within a reasonable period and at a cost which was not, like the present estimate, prohibitive. If the Department cannot reduce the cost substantially, then it must do what would obviously be a fair thing in any event, namely, shoulder at least three parts of the burden and recoup itself from the funds secured by sales of protected land in the past, and the thousands of acres it still bolds and will eventually sell.