Waikato River Operations.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 213, 29 September 1916, Page 2

Waikato River Operations.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—l have lead with much interest what you call "an offset" to Mr Ashley Hunter's report upon the effect of the Waikato Biver Board's operations contained in the statement made by Mr A. 6 Glass, the Board's chairman, and if he has not convinced me that am thing has yet been accomplished I am at least impressed with the fad that his lit pe* remain undiminished. The clierrf ul optimism which Mr ; Glass and his engineer, Mr Kennedy, possess is a most valuable factor when fighting against mere men and leads to many a victory againstlieavy odds, but the forces of Nature are unaffected by human temperament and the most cheery refusal to recognise hard facts will not ireate a greater fall in the Lower Waikato than Providence has provided it with. It is true that at one time they had good reason to believe that there was sufficient fall to allow of the river being lowered by a couple of feet at Mercer, but that figment of the imagination was swopt away long ago by the Government Drainage Engineer's survey Still, with undauuted serenity they have worked hopefully on and now after eome years' labour and the expenditure of many thousands of pounds what have they to show for it except a certain amount of injury to navigation and a serious threatening of the reclaimed lands at the Aka Aka ? Can they point to a single reach of the river where the water has been lowered a foot f

But perhaps the idea of loweiing the river has been given up for I see that Mr Glass says that " Mr Kennedy estimates that when the section is completed the river will be deepened at Mercer by at least 2ft 6in." Deepening the river at Mercer will not aid the draining of the swamps south of that town and it is hardly the improvement of navigation the Board is attempting to secure, or if it is they are proceeding about it in a very eccentric way. Evidently the groynes are not fulfilling the expectations so conconfidently placed in them, for we have lately witnessed the exercise of other brilliant inspirations, such as playing with a toy dredge in a river where millions of tons cf sand are read) to come down stream and fill up every hole made, and the still more farcical performance of blowing up the sand with gelignite. And the result of it all appears to be that the only permanent holes nude are those in the pockets of the unfortunate ratepayers. The late Mr James Stewart, C.E., used to say that there were two ways, and two ways only, of draiaing the Whangamarioo and Maramarua swamps by gravitation, and those were to jack up the North Island of New Zealand or to bale out the Tasman Sea If I had only thought of telling Mr Glass this when I first became his associate upon the River Board how much ineffectual work and how much of the ratepayers' money might have been saved.—l am, etc., HENRY E R. L. WILY