CORRESPONDENCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 973, 30 March 1911, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

HARBOUR BOARD MATTERS (To the Editor.) Sir. —Two paragraphs in your last issue must have proved very significant to any reader interested in the affairs of the Foxton Harbour Board, which has the prosperity of this district more in its hands than any other public body. One paragraph states that the bar is getting in a very bad state again and that vessels were unable to enter, while the other informs the long suffering public that the Board is to ask the engineer of the Wanganui Harbour Board to confer with members before taking definite action. Now, Sir, when are we going to get this “definite action?” Surely with the experience of last autumn and winter before them the Board should have started to move before a repetition of that trouble is right on top of them again, but we find that they have been lulled into a false security by the satisfactory working of Hie bar during the sumtn-T. .1 , ‘ have spent the time in vain talk aud an occasional trip to Wellington for a fruitless interview with the Minister of Railways. All the practical work done by the Board during the last 12 months could easily have beeu performed by the secretary aud the pilot. The Board has the experience of seafaring men who have made an almost life-long study of the Manawatu Bar before them, and must know that the conclusions these experts have arrived at, are that the improvement to the bar must first take the form of a systematic course of dredging. Why has the Board not done something with the idea of securing the loan of a suitable dredge for a test of say, three mouths ? Of course the Board will say that they have no money for such a purpose, but it is not an unreasonable thing to suppose that consignees of goods would be prepared to pay a special wharfage on geueral cargo aud coal for the purposes of making such a test An extra wharfage of is per ton on general cargo aud 6d per ton on coal, should bring the Board about /So per month, aud this should go a 1 long way towards paying tor the use of a suitable dredge, aud when the Government see that the Board are really in earnest aud are at last doing something, they no doubt would make a pro rata contribution. The requirements of the port call loudly for new blood and less of the Taihoa policy, for more deeds

and less words and a discontinuance oi the everlasting system of leaning on the Government. — I am, etc., Awahou,