ORARI BRIDGE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1170, 26 April 1884, Page 3

ORARI BRIDGE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —The harvest being over, one has a little time to spare, so I think it might not come amiss to let you know how they do things in the country districts. Well, sir, as I was passing over the Orari Bridge a few days ago I observed that the Road Board had been tinkering again at the north end, but when I got to Geraldine I was told that the Chairman of the Board had brought the plan from Wellington, it having been successfully adopted in the Hutt river. Its designer has taken out a patent for it, and the Geraldine Road Board is allowed to construct a work from the same design without infringing any rights, with a view of giving it a trial and getting it introduced into this Island —which may prove of immense advantage to the patentee. However, I am of opinion that the Board has made a great mistake in experi menting in the Orari riyer, it being a fast running one and scouring very much in fact, it would have been better to have allowed some other Board or Council to have tried it in deeper water than what the Orari is, and one that not so rapid. As to its utility, no one who has seen it thinks that it will stand, and it will be a great pity, for goodness knows that the Board has spent plenty of money in trying to protect the north approach getting on now towards £2OOO. Upon further enquiry I found that the Overseer has not much faith in it also that several members of the Board, if not all, had been led into it by the Chairman. In reality they have no confidence (this is not very flattering to them) in the work standing, and yet they are willing to be led into an expenditure of nearly £2OO as an experiment only, simply because the Chairman sees a similar work answering well in about 12 or 14 feet of water in a much slower river than the Orari. If I was a prophet my prediction would be as follows— namely, that the first heavy flood that tests the work will scour at one end of the logs, they will then sink into the hole, the other end will kick up, the logs will come out from between the piles or conductors and float down the river, leaving the piles standing as monuments of folly, ready to receive another cargo of logs, and the earth approach will go together with several more acres of private property ; probably the river will get into Ifc Hewson’s paddock and the bridge b' left high and dry. What looks so bad for the Board is that they

have elected to adopt an uncertainty instead of a certainty, for I am told that there it a tried work of some eight or nine years’ standing at the south end of the same bridge (which cost only about £120) staring them in the face, whilst they have spent nearly £2OOO in tinkering with the other end, aud the last expenditure seems to be the masterpiece of folly. In conclusion I must say that I did not think it po»sible foi the Chairman, who preaches economy, to have acted so inconsistently with reference to this matter, and it is to be hoped that a few questions will be asked him at the annual meeting which takes place early next month, for there is a difference between spending your own money and somebody else’s, Would the Board act in this manner with their own private affairs 7—l am, etc^, Nbm "‘U'JM, Orari Plains, April 241’), 1884.

[Our correspondent may be right with regard to the bridge. We are not in a position to form any opinion on the subject, but we can say one thing, and that is, that the Chairman of the Geraldine Road Board is far more closefisted with the Road Board money than he is with his own. Every institution can testify to his private munificence, whilst it is well known that his greatest fault, if it can be called a fault, is that he keeps a very tight string on the Road Board purse. He may have made a mistake with regard to the Orari Bridge, time will prove that, but no one will believe that he is acting regardless of wasting public money.— The Editor.]