HARBOR FACILITIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 October 1920, Page 4

HARBOR FACILITIES.

A WANGANUI EMBROQLIO. The proposal of the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce to offer Wanganui importers the benefit of direct shipments •through the port of New Plymouth has lead to a controversy between the Wanganui Chronicle and Mr. A. G. Bignell, chairman of the Wanganui Harbor Board. The Chronicle recently published an article stressing the success of New Plymouth as a deep sea port, and it used this as a peg on which to hang a strong article taking the Wanganui Harbor Board to task for not having made mor« progress with its harbor improvements ; in fact, the Chronicle politely intimated to the Board that it should fold its tent and go, and make way to a more progressive spirit. Tiie outcome is a reply from Mr. Bignell, who says: New Plymouth ii set up as an example because they had been getting some big ships in. Personally lie had offered his congratulations to them. They had been endeavoring for 40 years to make a deep sea port, and now they had succeeded he did not grudge them their success. But th» conditions there were entirely different; at New Plymouth theje was'deep water for a start, but at Wanganui they had the most difficult of all harbor propositions— Hie making of a harbor at a river month. We have provided facilities, which enable the district to send its produce out over the bar, to be lightered in the roadstead, at less, cost than it. could be shipped at either Wellington 01 New Plymouth. To this the Chronicle returns to dedare that the point is that so very little has been accomplished during th« past 15 years, that the development ol Wnnganui's port is very little, if any, further advanced than it" was then. . . . And that, as a matter of fact, the facilities for shipping are less favorable today than they were a few years ago.