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

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4420, 29 May 1922, Page 2

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

Although much of the time of the conference between the engineers. of the Public Works Department and members of ; the Thames Valley Drainage . Reference Board, held'at Paeroa;..? on Thursday, was taken up by :a few speakers of more wordiness, than ,wisdom; nevertheless the meeting justified, and will doubtless resist in good .being, accomplished,J, The. Departmental engineers placed the cards on the table, but there was really nothing of moment disclosed which an .observant rdader-of the “Gazette” would not have been apprised of. It is true that while a statement of the estimated cost of the work was given, the calculations for the various portions thereof were not available, but these Die Eflgineer-in-Chief (Mr. F. W. Furkert) promised to supply within one month. A depressing feature of the conference was that the placing of the cards on the table did not show any trumps for navigation, the policy of the Department uh-, deri this head being precisely where it has been ever since the Department commenced the scheme of improvements—a very secondary, consideration, and any improvement to tj effected: in the near future will be merely incidental—or accidental —but certainly not by design. We repeat most emphatically the opinion we have expressed in these columns over and over again ; namely, that the Department. is wilfully misappropriating funds in a way that the Government would never permit any local body to do. One of the most strictly enforced regulations pertaining to expenditure by local bodies is that money raised for a specific purpose must be spent for that purpose and no other; if a breach of this rule is made, members of thye local body concerned are liable to the imposition of heavy penalties, and their action can only be legalised by a special Act of validation by, Parliament, or by the Governor-General in Council. And yet some £26,000 of mining -revenue ha§ been collected by the Government for the express purpose of remedying, the darn age done, by mining siltation of the Ohinemuri River, but not one penny-piece has been spent in removing that silt for the improvement of the waterway. No wonder the representatives of the mining companies and of Waihi Borough want to know when the work originally intended to be undertaken will be commenced, and what their money has been taken for up to the present. Mr D. Donaldson (Mayor of Waihi) tersely complained at a meeting of the Thames Valley Drainage Reference Board thar Waihi Borough had been "filched” of 60 per cent, of its revenue to pay the cost of • remedying damage done by the mining industry, but the money had been spent for purposes other than that for which it was levied. The situation has a Gilbert, and Sullivan absurdity about it—minus the humour. .. :

To the people of Paeroa and' Tc Aroha, ancpt.o ,a ; lesser extent of Waihi, the factor of the navigability -of tl),e rivers is of serious importance—to -Paeroa and district it is paramount. The

future prospects of Paeroa as a distributing and manufacturing centre are bound up with ,the navigation question, and herculean efforts should be made to safeguard that interest. If the Ngahina wharf is the obstacle in the way- of the Department clearing the Ohinemuri for navigation purposes, it would pay the people of Paeroa- district to shoulder the burden of/its cost, provided that the Department cleared the river up to the town ;■ the keeping of freights down,, or even reducing them,, and cartage charges, would . more - than- compensate, to say nothing of the enormous benefit in future years to manufacturing concerns' and the public generally. To destroy, by a policy of "masterly inactivity” a town’s birthright, in order to infuse the good red blood of commercial life into the Ngahina white elephant, and to make the community pay for the disservice, is an enormity no power less , than the Government would have the audacity to attempt. The community should unite and fight as one man for the retention of what navigation facilities the town now possesses, and for the feturn of the old state of navigability, to enable shipping to resume its former town headquarters. Mining may come and mining may go, and with it the silt discharged from the batteries, but the river will be here forever, and no impediment should be allowed to destroy an immensely beneficial endowment of Nature. People are prone to become faint-hearted .when they are faced by great odds, but determination and persistence, guided Joy wisdom and prosecuted with great energy will overcome all obstacles. Less than a year ago the communications of the district were much worse than they are to-day; regular motor’’bus services now go through to as far as Waitakaruru, and will be extended or linked up with,another service to .Pokeno in. due •course; daily, mail services now obtain to Ngatea, which were non-existent a few months ago ; the ..PaeroarPatetonga .road and canal scheme has only recently been brought into the sphere of “practical politics,” but will almost certainly be through within four years at most; a combined and energetic effort would ensure a railway from Paeroa to Waitakaruru, at least; and other projects of lesser importance are getting appreciably nearer to fruition-all these things are being brought to pass by. perseverance and co-operation of effort. Shall it be said by.posterity that the people of Paeroa and. district were not courageous, enlightened, and public-spirited, enough to.: achieve the greatest .boon >pf all* —the return of navigability, for’ an inherently commercial waterway of inestimable value ■. past their doors ? The. existence of substantial preference in railway freights should prove to the .peo.pie the world-recognised'truth; that water-borrie, trade-.is.'the. cheapest of all . forms of : g.oo'ds : transportation. ~o'ntHis fqctor depends in a greet measure the-, commercial expansion of,, the town, the development of the district, the growth of those educational and social institutions which raise the status of civilisation and increase the amenities of life. The consummation or otherwise of the ends desired will depend to a very large extent indeed on the degree to which the people shew, by their enterprise and sustained effort, their worthiness to retain and enrich the magnificent heritage. Nature in the first instance has upon them dowered.