The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1879.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 284, 8 October 1879, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1879.

In another column Mr Donald Donald calls attention to a new plan for turning rivers.. In New Zealand we are gradually learning a little about how to tieat mountain torrents, and even in the Wairarapa we begin to see the mischief which lias been done in the past mid have a dim idea how to avoid it in the future. The turning of our local streams is a tolerably easy matter so easy that tliey have all more or less been diverted jit certain points in their courses, and it is to these diversions that we owe a good deal of the dannve they have done, The grand thing with rivers appears to be either to protect the banks efficiently, or to let them alone altogether. The former altcrnativo is impracticable, as it involves an outlay beyond our means; and the hitter is infinitely preferable to the meddling and muddling which ha« been indulged in by amateurs and professed river turners. Turning a river off one point to save A, means turning it on to another to attack B. When B objects to the encroachment, the river has to be turned on to 0; and in this manner an endless, irregular, and unprofitable outlay is incurred. The true economy is, only to build at points where there are banks of a permanent character, and not to allow these structures to block or turn the ordinary current in any shape or way. Apparently a large proportion of the principal bridges i n the Wairarapa have been built m wrong places, Hence the displacement of many of our streams and the perpetual charges incumbent upon US for protective works. Anyone can turn a mountain torrent; but as no on 6 appears to be able to control one within bounds, it is evident that any turr taken is merely a leap in the dark which may do more harm than good, or the reverse, as it may turn out. Experience proves that the more we do to rivers, the more we have to do. The disease grows under the hands ot the curators, and that which was at the outset of an acute character, developes with handling into a chronic complaint If we could get a plan of the Waiohine as it was five-and-twenty years a<*o we should probably find that it flowed through one or two defined channels' now it runs through about .a hundred! and this is the result of the ingenuity of man in the matter. of protective works.