HARBOUR BOARD MATTERS

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 385, 14 May 1908, Page 2

HARBOUR BOARD MATTERS

Wk clip the following, published as an editorial in Wednesday’s Dominion, in reference to the above subject:—The deputation which waited upon the Minister for Marine yesterday in prosecution of the proposal to establish a Harbour Board for Foxton was told that the Railway Department is disinclined to do its part in meeting the wishes of the residents. At present the harbour and the wharf are under the control respectively of the Marine and the Railway Departments. The Railway Department annually collects in wharfage over and does not spend a single penny in improving the channel. Asa result, the trade of the little port has been heavily handicapped. The steamer Himatangi is at the moment of writing stranded in the river. The Foxton Chamber of Commerce has been agitating lor the formation of a Harbour Board

as a first step towards effecting those trade-expanding improvements which an; impossible while the Railway Department collects, for absorption into the general railway finances, the wharfage profits that should properly go to the improvement of the local harbour that produces them. Certain endowments are, therefore, asked lor —which the Minister for Marine sees no reason for withholding, and it is further requested that the wharfage profits, or at any rate the greater part of them, should be handed over to the proposed Board, which would then proceed to raise money for the improvement of the channel. The result would, of course, be immediately beneficial to the port, which serves a very large tract of country. The Railway Department, however, which makes a good deal of money out of the trade of the port without spending anything upon its improvements, has up to the present shown itself disinclined to forego any of its advantages. The issue I el ween the Chamber of Commerce and the Department is a perfectly simple one. In effect, the Chamber asks that the Department should be content with its railway profits, and should divest itself of its wharfage profits in the interests of the port and district, and in the interests, therefore, of the railway business itself. Should the Minister for Railways, who is to be approached by the deputation to-day refuse to go any distance towards meeting the wishes of the town, he will involve his Department in a charge of exploiting the port for the benefit of the rest of the country, or, to put it in another way, of collecting a compara vely small amount of general railway revenue at a serious cost to the best interests of the community directly affected. It is clearly to the interest of the Manawatu district that its coastal por should be made efficient, and th the Railway Department should therefore, make a concession Which is insignificant to it, but which is of such moment to Foxton that it will make all the difference between an imperfect and unreliable channel and a well-kept waterway. We cannot perceive any good reason for obstinacy on the part of the Department. On its financial side, the proposal to form a Board seems sound enough, and, as at Patea, which has the advantage that Foxton is asking for, there will be no necessity to strike a rate for the payment of interest on the loan that would be raised for improvement works. The net revenue, if the Railway Department would fall in with the new proposal, would he between ,£I6OO and /2000, and this would be ample for all purposes. The people of Foxton are to be commended for their efforts to improve their port, and they well deserve the small consideration which they are asking at the hands of the Department