HAURAKI DRAINAGE BOARD.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5441, 28 June 1929, Page 2

HAURAKI DRAINAGE BOARD.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—In your Issue of the 24th inst.. in your report of the Hauraki Drainage Board’s meeting, I notice I am pilloried for sins of commission and omission. In reply thereto I, desire to say that the statements therein referring to myself are absolutely contrary to fact. None of my stock has damaged any of the board’s drains, and the board knows it, or should know it. Further, the statement about “chains”—“many chains of drain have been damaged”—is absolutely untrue. The crocodile tears shed over this would be laughable if it were not contemptible. Briefly, the position is this : The Drainage Board decided to put a drain in along my southern boundary part of the way to the Piako River. As the land adjoining me is Native land, I therefore agreed that the board should put the whole of the drain on my side of the boundary instead of on the boundary, as is usual. Well, sir, that drain has been a nightmare to me ever since. Although the drain was barely a two months’ job for two practical men, it was let over six months ago to a Native or Natives owning the land adjoining, who have been working at it when they liked and leaving it alone when they liked, and it is not finished yet. Meantime my boundary fence was pulled down and my stock allowed to wander, causing me needless The outlets of these subdivisional fences connecting with the boundary fence have been pulled down at the unction and left down. There was an old drain where this one is going, with subdivisional drains running into it. The outlets of these subdivisioal drains have been filled up with the spoil from the new drain, though there was no necessity to do that. I have written two letters addressed to the chairman and members of the board pointing this out as well as other matters. Both these letters have been ignored and not acknowledged. As a ratepayer, as a matter of courtesy I have a right to ( expect that the receipt of my letter would have been acknowledged at least by the board in your Press report. As a ratepayer it is in my interests that the drains should be kept in good order. Regarding Price’s drain, during the past winter T have always reported any slips or obstructions in this drain. I absolutely deny that any damage has been done to this drain by me ; or, beyond slips, that this drain is damaged in any way. No man with even a simple elementary knowledge of draining would say so. I criticised in ’another journal, in a fair and open manner, the Hauraki Plains methods of draining and impoverishing the land, and I suppose the board with my own and other ratepayers’ money has decided, after the Russian fashion, to persecute me by prosecuting me.

J. W. McLARIN