LOCAL DRAINAGE

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 163, 11 July 1900, Page 4

LOCAL DRAINAGE

It is not a. whit too soon for the local bodies, here to turn their, com; bined attention to a comprehensive scheme of drainage for the city and suburbs. Though the extent of the area to be embraced and the peculiar conformation of the ground would suggest that the work will have to be carried out in the different districts on more or less independent lines, it is certain that to be done efficiently it must be effected by the various bodies working in concert; and eventually this will be done. In the meantime, however, there is bound to be a certain opposition to a scheme which proposes to make contributories to the cost of the work areas which would not immediately benefit by it. At the conference of local bodies yesterday to consider the question of drainage there were already evidences of that opposition. The delegate from Epsom represented that it was scarcely reasonable to ask his district to contribute towards a sewer to improve the drainage ,of the jHobson Bay area' since no sewage from Epsom found its way there; ■ A similar representation might, with even more reason, have been made on behalf of the One Tree Hill district; and probably Mount Eden could take up the same position. It may be, as the chairman said, that large parts of these suburbs will in the end have to find an outlet for their drainage by Batkin's Creek, which empties into Hobson's Bay; but at present the small amount of their sewage is absorbed' into the porous soil, and until it is necessary for it to be removed by a drain it may seem scarcely fair to the ratepayers in these suburbs that they should be called on to contribute towards the expense of sewers in other parts. With-, regard to the. large proportion of the area which it is proposed to lay under contribution for the cost of the sewer into Hobson's Bay, there is no questioning the immediate benefit it would derive

from the work or-, indeed its responsibility for having it done. The Hobson's ' Bay gully affords the only natural .fall for the drainage from a poi-tion of Auckland city, a large part of Parnell, Newmarket, and Eemuerii.- -The course of Batkin's creek must be the line of a main sewer. On that point there can be no difference of opinion; and the meeting: yesterday in resolving to create by .''special Act of Parliament a sewage board' for the area affected, with power to construct the necessary works, took the first step towards the accomplishment of a project that in the interests of the common health should be pushed forward with expedition.