LAND DRAINAGE.

Southland Times, Issue 18818, 11 May 1920, Page 2

LAND DRAINAGE.

To the Editor. Sir, —A letter appeared in your paper of April 13 on the subject of Land Drainage, signed A. 8., and it should be a very urgent matter for very many people of Southland. Mr F. D. Morrai has also referred to the urgency of creek clearing. The reason why I am writing is that one of my sons at Gorge Road some time ago let a contract for the sum of some twelve hundred pounds for the clearing of, a creek for a certain distance and certain dimensions at Gorge Road. The means used is a motor traction plant converted into a hauling engine of 16 h.p., driven with petrol, operating a powerful scoop with two strong steel teeth projecting from the lip of the scoop to penetrate and hold any obstruction with which the scoop is to meet. The creek, I wish to say, is a tidal, dirty, ugly, silted stream, chock full of timber, having run for centuries through a dense forest. The powerful plant is using a 1.1 inch steel rope for hauling the stuff out of the creek, a 5/8 inch rope to pull the scoop back and a 1| inch rope stay, which is fastened on to a log sunk in the ground, where no tree is handy to counteract the pull from the creek. The creek has to be cleared 14feet wide at the bottom and some twelve feet from the top of the bank. Some idea may be gained of the work done by the mass of timber, silt, scrub and other rubbish which is piled up on the bank of the creek. I have measured black pine trees nearly 4 feet in diameter, the trunk 20 feet long with wide spreading ugly roots and some branches silted up and water-logged, possibly for a century or more. My boys and I passed this place many times in twenty-five years when the water in the creek was low and never noticed these trees. Yet, now the contractor has pulled these sticks right on top of the bank. With the exceptions of the bends, Ihe creek has now more the appearance of an artificially built canal than a natural water course. Where the floodgate is constructed, the contractor with his scoop cut through a neck in the creek some chains long a water course 16 feet wide at the bottom, 20 feet wide at the top and 12 feet deep. Anyone will agree that this is “some” ditch. It is a pity that, owing to lack of means, this work cannot be carried along the whole course of the creek and settlement as the work done has given every satisfaction both to the man who did it and to those for whom it is done, and as it brings under cultivation several hundred acres of the best land in Southland that was formerly almost wholly flooded. The above method may not be the cheapest and the most practical known, but for a timber creek it is very effective and it is a pity that the contractor and his men cannot be constantly employed at this occupation in different parts of Southland. —I am, etc., N. A. NIEDEREE.