Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JUNE 13, 1938. FLOODS AND COMIC OPERA.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 June 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JUNE 13, 1938. FLOODS AND COMIC OPERA.

especially if ■ it opens the way to effective co-operation between the State and local authorities, the new system of flood protection outlined broadly by the Minister of Public Works (the Hon R. Semple), when he discussed the position with the members of the Featherston County Council and other Lower Valley representatives on Friday, may be expected to yield excellent results. Some of those who have long been labouring, in face of difficulty and discouragement, to establish a measure of protection against floods in their own areas may be angered by Mr Semple’s statement that the system of flood protection operating in New Zealand today “is comic opera and stupid in the extreme?’’ It is familiar knowledge, however, that the efforts thus far made in the Dominion to set limits to flood damage have been in great part ineffective and conflicting. The need for a unified control of the work was rightly emphasised by the Wairarapa representatives who interviewed the Minister on Friday.

The last word has not necessarily beeh said as to the conditions in which flood protection work should be shared by local bodies and the State, but an end plainly ought to be made of the existing multiplicity of river boards incapable, on account of the smallness of their areas and for other reasons, even of attacking hopefully the problem with which they are concerned.

It is certainly necessary, as Mr Semple contended, that the best engineering’ advice available should be retained and enabled to concentrate on the total problems of river and sea erosion as these have taken shape in New Zealand. Well-supported action is not made any the less -necessary by the fact that a vast amount of irreparable harm has been done in this country by the destruction of watershed forests and other acts of vandalism which have laid fertile lands open to devastation or destruction. At the stage we have reached, New Zealand must either spend money freely in giving competent engineers a free hand in setting what limits are still possible to flood damage, or expect to suffer continuing losses which will vastly outweigh the cost of designing and carrying out-protective works.

In some parts of the world, valuable experience has been gained in dealing with flood problems—experience by which New Zealand may yet profit. Some flood protection schemes in the United States, for example, include the construction of great irrigation storage basins, from which valuable supplies of water may be drawn in the dry season. Works in this category and others, in parts of the Dominion, may give some return upon what is spent in establishing protection against floods. Even where no hope of new or additional advantage appears, however, broad-based action, based on the best scientific advice that can be obtained, boldly planned and effectively controlled in large areas, is demanded imperatively if this country is to set limits to losses suffered by erosion.

A last word on the subject at the moment may be that the Minister of Public Works might have found an even better target for satire in the failure as yet effectively to conserve what is left of our watershed and other protection forests than in anything that is done or left undone by imperfectly organised river boards. An enterprising policy of forest conservation and development is by far the most hopeful and profitable contribution that could now be made to a national scheme of protection against floods. The working force of the Forest Service must be strengthened considerably, and really serious efforts must be made to set a period to the wasteful damage still being done to forests by the ravages of imported animals and in other ways, if the remnants of forest which still protect some areas against floods are to be perpetuated. In the right conditions, the area of protection might be extended progressively, though hardly rapidly, by scientific methods of regeneration and the extension of planting. As yet, however, the menace of eventual extirpation still hangs over our forests.