Waikato River Works

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 7, Issue 358, 8 March 1918, Page 4

Waikato River Works

[To the Editor ] Sir—Tour correspondent "Ratepayer," in his letter published in your issue of Tuesday last on the Waikato River Board's works says it is a "great pity that an important work like this should be hampered because of some threatened slight local injury." If he calls the depositing of from one to two million cubic yards of sand in the Aka Aka channel a " threatened slight local injury " how much would it require to make him admit a material injury had really taken place ? With a careful economy of facts "Ratepayer " tells your readers that the Royal Commission found no injury had been done to the Aka Aka land. He does not mention that it held that injury had bean done to the drainage, and that injury to the land must naturally follow. Nor does he tell them that the Commission reported that the groynes were of no use to the River Board's objective or to the improvement of the river in any shape or form. They have not lowered the surface nor deepened the channel, and all they have effected has been to ruin the Aka Aka channel and to drain the pockets of the unfortunate ratepayers. "Ratepayer's" statement that there was a verbal arrangement between the River Board and the Aka Aka and Otaua ratepayers that help and not opposition would be given by the latter if they were relieved from the rating area is absolutely incorrect and without foundation. These districts were released because the Waikato River Board was beaten to a stand-still; and as to a modus vivendi all hope of that failed when the River Board refused to even meet the Chairmen of the Otaua and Aka Aka Drainage Boards to confer as to a means by which the River Board might pursue its scheme without injuring Aka Aka and Otaua lands. In connection with this matter I notice that the River Board at its last meeting and at the previous one took its discussion on the question of the removal of the groynes in committee. It is unfortunate that the ratepayers and the public should be so frequently debarred the hearing of the pros and com upon matters of greatest importance to them, but from the Board's point of view it is perhaps the wisest policy. If the ratepayers of the River District could only have heard one fourth of the discussions that the Press was shut out from during the time I was a member of the Board they would have risen en masse and demanded the instant abolition of the River District—Yours, etc ,

HENRY E. R. L WELY Mauku, 7th March, 1918.