OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1939, Page 6

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

HOSING RESTRICTIONS (To the Editor.) Sir, —In one notice in your paper the times and days for hosing are given and a reminder is definitely given that non-observance of these particulars will lead to prosecution. Disgraceful as it is for a community of this size, so abundantly supplied with rivers, to require hosing restrictions as early as November, it is nevertheless, under existing circumstances, apparently necessary. If we grant this present necessity, then the times and days for hosing appear quite reasonable. However, in a separate notice, immediately underneath, residents are prohibited from using their hoses on lawns. There is no word of prosecution here. Can somebody answer the following question: If the council gives the right to use the hose for certain times can they legally demand that you use it on one part of your small section but not another? If the answer is in the affirmative then 1 can see few things more tyrannical than such a regimentation of your own acts within your own home and within the legal limes of hosing. I thought a by-law to be legal had to be reasonable. This is not!

With the expansion in housing prominent in this town quite a few residents, to make their homes and thereby the town more attractive, have at their own expense of £5 to £lO put down lawns last autumn or this spring, anticipating reasonable hosing restrictions. Now they find their £lO gone, that effort wasted and what is worse their hopes crashed to the ground; for what newly-established lawn will, hold from now till April, without a certain amount of hosing? There are those people who ardent lovers of an expanse of lawn, would sacrifice a garden for a lawn; but the council says you must not. I can appreciate the council’s desire to stop some from using an over lavish supply of water on old established lawns, but surely the personal attendance at the hose would do this. 1 cannot see why one man should be able to have ample water for his flowers, his heart’s desire, while another, requiring perhaps no greater volume of water, should be compelled to stand by and see his desires —a good lawn —disregarded, g 1 offer a suggestion. Either slightly reduce the hours of hosing and leavQ us free to make our own decisions on. what we prize most in our own private homes, or, and this I think better if the council has the right and inclination to make these dictatorial decisions for us, allow the hosing of lawns on one of the days permitted for hosing. I sincerely hope this letter will do something which, while not depriving others of a necessary pressure, will at the same time save our lawns. I am, etc. A LOVER OF LAWNS. Masterton. November 27. BOROUGH WATER SUPPLY (To the Editor.) Sir, —Your readers have frequently enjoyed the interesting reminiscences of Mr Bannister and none more so than his contribution in Saturday's issue on the Lansdowne water supply. He enlightened us on the true position. His idea to have an intake from the Ruamahanga River, with filter beds up above Mr D. McLeod's property. Mount Bruce, with a reservoir on the Mokonui bank (Hawkhurst) coincides with the opinion of the late Mr Charles Beetham. who told me that a pipe line from this reservoir could bring the water by gravitation to the top of the hill at Lansdowne. The intake made by the County Council a few chains below the Railway Bridge can bring the water equally as well, only at a lower level. If the nine-inch pipe line were replaced by two foot reinforced concrete pipes (made in Masterton), allowing six inches out of that for the Opaki water supply, leaves eighteen inches for Masterton. The only expenditure incurred would be the actual cost of the pipes, as the Government would likely provide the labour free. Mr Bannister says that what the health inspector condemned the open race for was dogs drinking and rolling in it. which left a supply of hydatid cysts. What has the Health Department done in the matter since then? Now every dog has to be registered annually and given a dose supplied by the Department to purge it of any hydatid cysts that may have found lodgment in its body. Beyond the pipe line, where the race is open, right up to the intake at the river, very few dogs are kept that could get access to the water. Farmers, for the protection of their flocks, shoot stray dogs at sight. The menace of this truly horrible danger may be said safely to have been removed. I have no personal interest in' the matter. It is for the people of Masterton to treat the suggestion made as they think fit. I am. etc. JAMES LENNIE. Linnlea. November 27.