Harbor Compensation.

Patea Mail, 13 September 1882, Page 3

Harbor Compensation.

The claim for compensation by the Harbor Board against the Government h*s not quite failed. Government took certain land with which the Board had been endowed as reserves, the land being required for railway purposes. The Harbor Board got a valuation made by Mr Cowern and Mr Dale, showing the value of the land taken, and also showing depreciation to the remaining part of the reserve by severance and inaccessibility. The valuers for the Board made out a loss, direct and indirect, of nearly £4,000. The Board sent to the Government a claim for this amount, find also asking for other portions of unsold land in the district to be given as compensation for the claim. The claim went before the Waste Lands Committee, who took the evidence of Mr Coutts as chairman of the Harbor Board, The Committee reported to the effect that they could do nothing bat refer the claim to the Government. This was equivalent to saying that the claim was not based on a principle which the Committee could entertain. The' Government have since dealt with the claim, and the sequel is contained in the letter from the Undersecretary for Public Works, and read at Monday’s meeting of the Harbor Board: I am directed by the Minister for Public Works to acknowledge receipt of your letter of 31st of July enclosing a claim for £3,889 10s, value of land taken from the endowment of the Patea Harbor Board, for railway purposes, and in reply to stats that the Minister cannot admit your claim ; the 142 nd and following clauses of the Harbors Act, 1878, providing that the Government may resume such harbor land as is required for public works, on paying a sum “ not in any case exceeding the

amount which the Board shall have actually laid out upon the said land in permanently improving the same.” Mr Coutts had telegraphed to Major Atkinson the nature of the above reply, and asking him to bring the Boaid’s petition before the Public Petitions Committee. This body deals with various grievances, and makes recommendations to the House as to whether any particular grievance is one requiring redress. That Committee has now considered the Board’s petition, and recommends to the House that lands given to local bodies, on the security of which money has been borrowed, should not be taken for railway purposes without fair compensation ; that the Patea Board’s claim should be submitted by Government to arbitration in tho usual manner, in order to ascertain the value of the land taken ; deductions to be made for any increased value the remaining land may have acquired by the railway works. This places the claim in a hopeful position. It is to be hoped that the Harbor Board will not press for the other bits of land asked for as compensation, but that when a certain value has been awarded as compensation by the arbitrators, the Board will then take up the question of opening the river to navigation, and asking for np-river land as a means of carrying ont that project. The land they can got on the open coast has a definite value, and won’t help the Board much; whereas land up the river has only a nominal value, and can be utilised by the Board (and by no other local body) as a means to a large scheme for up-river settlement.