Lurking Danger

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 751, 26 August 1929, Page 8

Lurking Danger

Munitions at North Shore

RESIDENTS of the North Shore are displeased by the Government’s intention to spend £.2,000 this year in enlarging the ammunition store at Narrow Neck, and £33,000 on extensions to the naval quarters at Calliope Dock, Devonport. Personal representation is likely to he made to the Prime Minister this week with a view to having all naval and military explosives removed from the borough.

The agitation to have all explosives taken away from Devonport and placed in a safe spot further down the gulf is not of recent origin. People on the Shore have for years nursed the grievance that valuable residential sites in Auckland’s most attractive marine suburb were being used for military and naval purposes, and that the value of adjacent properties was lowered first by naval operations at Calliope Dock, secondly by the military camp at Narrow Neck, and thirdly by the presence of the ammunition dump at Fort Takapuna, Narrow Neck. Repeated assurance has been given officially that there is no danger of an explosion among the several hundred tons of explosives in the ammunition store, but the dispatch of cablegrams from different parts of the world reporting an explosion in a magazine in Bukarest, and the blowing away of a ship’s gun turret in the Mediterranean, suggests in the public mind that there is never complete safety where there are big quantities of high explosives and ammunition. MUNITIONS THROUGH STREETS Moreover, the transfer of munitions from ships to the store is causing no little misgiving among the cautious residents of Devonport. In execution of its policy of safety first, the Auckland Harbour Board will not allow ships carrying munitions to bring their dangerous cargo up to the wharf. Warships entering port, also, must empty their magazines before they tie up at the dock. But later on—frequently at dead of night, the residents say—the ammunition is taken through the streets of the suburban borough to its storing place at Narrow Neck. The reverse process is undertaken when the ships again leave port for gunnery practice or for general naval manoeuvres requiring a certain amount of ammunition—dangerous material has to be conveyed through the streets of the town.

No rates are paid to the borough upon any Government property. Every piece of land that is taken by the Crown, then, not only robs the suburb of a valuable residential site, but deprives the borough council of a definite sum in rates. For example, the Narrow Neck camp area has an un-

improved value of £56,000. and if made available for residential sites and rated accordingly would yield for the council anything between £2,000 and £3,000. Similarly with North Head, where an area of about 26 acres, of an unimproved value of nearly £20,000, should bring in something over £2,000 in rates if split up into proper building sections. In addition, the Admiralty possesses certain sections on Queen’s Parade, upon -which no rates are paid. BIG LOSS IN RATES

The people on the Shore are uncompromising in their attitude toward the military and naval activities. Their opinion, as expressed by a resolution of the Devonport Borough Council a fortnight ago, clearly seeks the removal of all explosives from the borough, and the establishment of a dump away from the North Shore — preferably on one of the many islands in the gulf. The proposals of the Government to buy property in Calliope Road, and spend £33,000 upon buildings there, and to spend an extra £2,000 on further racks for ammunition at Narrow Neck, have been greeted with a chorus of dissent, and when the Mayor of Devonport, Mr. E. A. Aldridge, is in Wellington this week attending the Municipal Conference, he will probably make personal representation to the authorities, and ask Cabinet’s agreement to his council’s proposals. As the people now see the position, they are losing something like £5,000 a year in rates, as well as facing a potential danger of the whole foreshore to Stanley Bay being monopolised eventually for an Admiralty base. But before that stage is reached, the people of the North Shore will have something to say. The hand of the council has been forced because, in spite of repeated representation, successive Ministers have refused to acknowledge any financial liability either by increasing the State subsidy to the council in lieu of rates or by assisting to maintain certain streets in the borough which are used largely for Government purposes. The present Minister of Defence, however, left the impression on the Shore that he was sympathetic to the people’s requests.