The Sun. 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND MONDAY, MARCH 11, 1929 ARAPUNI VINDICATED

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 609, 11 March 1929, Page 8

The Sun. 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND MONDAY, MARCH 11, 1929 ARAPUNI VINDICATED

AFTER studying all the data at command, and making a tlior- ** ough personal inspection of the locality, the lion. E. A. Ransom has come to the expected conclusion concerning the Arapuni dam, that it is a sound and reliable structure, of such stability as to warrant no fears, even among those whose properties and habitations lie in the valley immediately below it. That any other opinion concerning the dam should ever have been entertained is largely due to the report issued, seemingly without a proper sense of responsibility, by Mr. R. W. Holmes. Many people bad already allowed their judgments on the subject to be prejudiced by the unfortunate series of delays and hold-ups in the prosecution of the work. Here there was real ground for dissatisfaction, but there was no cause for suspicion of the dam.

Issued as it was on the eve of the election—a circumstance 1 hat. should have classified it at once—Mr. Holmes’s statement quite probably cost the Reform Government a large number of votes. Mr. Ransom would have had more political prescience than most had lie pictured himself then as the next Minister of Public Works. Yet, so lie finds himself, placed there partly by popular suspicion of the very structure whose stability he now confirms.

Tt is rare testimony to the security of the dam that the new Minister, who is tied by no commitments of earlier policy, and who, indeed, is entitled to regard the old Government and its enactments as fair game, should pronounce it “a perfectly safe structure.” People have grown to be so suspicious of anything issued by a politician that it is doubtful even now if the uneasy farmers in the lower Waikato basin will permit their fears to subside. It is not always easy for people well away from the danger zone to acquire the perceptions and point of view of those whose homes and lives, in the event of a disaster, would he at the mercy of the waters. On a trivial scale the recent happening on Mount Eden demonstrated wliat may follow when pent-up waters are released. Even making allowance for this difference in points of view, however, it must be pointed out that the logic of cold facts is against further uneasiness, and it is to be hoped that the people chiefly concerned in the agitation will agree with Mr. Ransom that a Royal Commission is no longer necessary. Were a commission to be set up it could only examine the same facts as those presented to Mr. Ransom. In view of the Minister’s position as an unfettered critic whose bias, if any, would he against the late Government, the commission could hardly view the evidence with any more impartiality than he, and sinee a commission could not under the circumstances be expeeted to reach any different conclusion, and would place a burden of additional expenditure on a country that is already sufficiently commission-ridden, the reasons why it should he dispensed with are obvious. All who know the fine record of the New Zealand Public Works Department will greet the Minister’s pronouncement with satisfaction. Whatever differences of opinion may he held as to the expediency of developing Arapuni before Waikaremoana, or atj to the relative merits of one site or another on the Waikato, it is uncharitable to a great service to suggest that human safety was overlooked when the final decision was reached. The same may he said for the engineers of Armstrong-Whitworths—the men who built the dam. Their professional integrity stands behind every yard of the great structure. And the professional integrity of the British engineer is a good warranty of sound design and craftsmanship.