NELSON HARBOR IMPROVEMENTS.

Motueka Star, Volume I, Issue 29, 19 November 1901, Page 4

NELSON HARBOR IMPROVEMENTS.

[Open Letter.]

To the Chairman and Members of the

Harbour Board.

Gentlemen.—Crushing events have proved how much it is to.be deplored you did not profit by the advice contained in my letter to you of the 3rd of April last, instead of hiding it from the public as you did. I believe myself right in saying that I am the only qualified man here, and that my position in my profession, together with my experience in it —to say nothing of the great personal interest I have in saving the Harbour from destruction—entitled my letter to a very different reception to that which you gave it. You had not even the decency to acknowledge the receipt of it, or to thank me. Yet if the newspaper reports are correct you, at a public meeting in the Provincial Hall elected to secure the services of Mr Reynolds as an "expert" because, —"being a young man, with his spurs to win, he would take pains." Therefore in staking his "reputation" on the success of his scheme and for the advanced him, Mr Reynolds according to those gentlemen, staked what they made out he had not got— "reputation." "Well after such performances, the Greek Kalands may be looked upon as having been discovered by you ; discovered by a new lexicographer, who has it that an "expert in anything, means a neophyte in it, "a young man with his spurs to win." A kind of novice, or entered apprentice, instead of a Past Master in the craft.

In view, then of electing an "Expert" in so novel a way, you can, on reflection, hardly be surprised on finding that the "young man's" estimate of should have bc-.en and his three years to accomplish the work should have been ten years ; and that instead of filling the Harbour with water, he would fill it high and dry witli st nd. Mr Roderick McKenzie M.H.R., an eminently practical man in such matters, and a member of your Board, warned you of this. He told you that .if the present scheme was adopted you would have dry land right away out to the buoys. Two other members of your Board, Messrs Finney and Trask, urged the importance of putting down borings on the Boulder Bank ; and had it not been for the persistence of those two gentiemeri you would have been building castles in Spain. That tardy recognition of first principles and of Cosmogonic research resulted in your having to peel off, so to speak, your own epidermis. But the painful operation over, your senses were ravished. For lo ! was there not shot out of the bore hole your" Expert" enveloped in long ooze— beraggled gum boots, mud-bespatted raiment, wild dishevelled hair, and other theatrical accessories to trumpet to you bp fanfaronade that the Boulder Bank was not made of rock at all, but of soft loose stuff down to depths unknown," down to the inferno, in fact. And did not the "Mail" enthuse in true penny—a —liner gush because the job could now be done for a mere song. Alas ! that gush should have been a lament, a wail, for the tidings heralded from the bore hole was the tocsin to all your hopes, had the unhappy gusher only known it. It was to the raw recruit, and to those who had not yet mastered the goose step in such matters, the death knell to your scheme. It was the epilogue to which the curtain was rung down. And, now, gentlemen, before the drop scene rises to an entirely new piece by a standard author, and before you dissolve for the reconstruction of the Board, the expulsion of any who may be here to-mor-row and gone to-day, there is another important matter requiting explanation, a matter the sequel to which has materially conduced to the public having lost confidence in you. 1 refer to the statement you have assiduouslv given out that Government had bound you to accept and carry out the plans of the "young man who had his spurs to win," Mr Leslie Reynolds to the exclusion of all others.

Coming from such a source as your Board I naturally believed in the "political job" you said it was. Matters arising, however, which caused me to doubt the truth of your statement, I, on the 23rd ultimo, wrote Government, asking, point blank, whether what you had given out was a fact, or whether it was a fiction.

To this direct question I, on the 25th ultimo, received a reply, stating that your assertion was not true, and had no foundation in fact.

Although treated as I have been by you .1 write this letter without any feeling of malice. It is a public matter, and I believe it to be in the interest of the public; and that there are occasions when language is not given to conceal our thoughts, or to be

veiled in allegory, or clothed in mystery Plain speaking, at such a moment as this, is not only permissible, but imperative. I therefore remain, gentlemen, Yours faithfully, . F. BUXTON, C.E. Nelson, Nov. 4th, 1901.