Making a Borough.

Patea Mail, 6 February 1882, Page 3

Making a Borough.

(niOM OUR (J ORUESP 0NI) E N T.) Norman by, Monday. To-morrow being the day appointed for the election of a Mayor for Hawera, the addresses of the candidates and their fitness for office are being freely and warmly discussed. These addresses are not deemed satisfactory ns a whole, and one candidate does not even condescend to a single particular, hut contents himself with a comprehensive generalisation which might mean anything you like at the sweet will of the author. Mr Winks, in a supplementary address, assures ratepayers that, if elected, be will lose no time in forcing forward the drainage of the town. This is undoubtedly the most important matter which could engage the attention of any Borough syndicate, and imperiously demands the immediate concentration of all their energies. Past neglect and increasing population, with their consequent accumulation of defilements, are polluting the air, percolating the earth, and engendering disease. The odours emitted from the fermentation of feculent matter, and now intensified by the heat, are telling on the health of some of the inhabitants. Into what recess do you suppose the foul and unwholesome fluids of the Borough are drained off ? The wells of Hawera are in too many instances the stagnant receptacles of surface drainage. The assertion is no metaphorical presentment. A respectable plumber who has repaired pumps on several occasions found that on opening the wells (which were hermetically closed), the air nearly asphyxiated him by the sudden escape of carbonic acid gas with which the closed wells were surcharged. On emptying their waters the effluvia of some of them is described as overpowering and sickening. The waters were quite green, and the emissions from their fetid and putrid volume produced violent vomiting. Imagine the effect of drinking this water in its impurity ! The fact that there is not more sickness, fever, and even cholera in Hawera, is due perhaps to the evil effects being neutralized by boiling the water, and the consequent precipitation of its deleterious ingredients. Lime thrown in would be a stringent deodorizer, but the chemical poison would still remain.