WASTE LANDS BOARD.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 135, 9 June 1877, Page 2

WASTE LANDS BOARD.

The following resolution was passed by the Nelson Waste Lands Board at a special meeting of the Board held on Thursday, the 7th day of June, 1877:—

"That this Board, having observed in public print that certain statements reflecting injuriously upon the administration of the Board, which are contained in a letter addressed by the. Chairman of the Buller County Council to the Hon Minister for Justice, are accepted as correct by the Hon Minister without enquiry, and are indirectly repeated by him on behalf of his colleague, the Secretary for Crown Lands, desire to -rccGrd the expression of their regret that the Minister for Justice should not have adopted the usual course of referring the accusations of the County Chairman to the Board before deciding that they rested upon auy reasonable basis. The Board would tfjen have been able to inform the Hon Minister that so far as land in the Buller

County, whether within or without the Boiler Coal Keserva, has been withheld from sale or lease, it has teen so withheld upon • the urgent and repeated requests of the Go- • vernment themselves, as represented by the. late Minister for Public Works, in the firss named Woek in order to allow, time fora complete mineral survey, the plans of which are not yet completed, or, at least, have not been supplied to the Board, and as regards the Crown lands between the Reserve and the sea in order to save tha enhanced cost, and avoid, the troublesome complications in the construction of the Mount Rochfort Railway, which would have ensued from granting a number of speculative applications. As regards the land on the Nine Mile Road, which the Board have long been anxious to put into the market, they are assured by the Chief Surveyor that a fresh survey is absolutely necessary before it could be safe to do so, although two surveys have already been made of it in fche time of his predecessor. The hon. Minister for Justice is perhaps not aware that the Board had no connection, with the administration of Crown lands within the boundaries of the gold fields until the lst January, 1875, all jurisdiction on. their part having* previously b««n expressly excluded by the « Gold Fields Act, 1866/ "