THE DRAINAGE QUESTION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 162, 9 July 1907, Page 7

THE DRAINAGE QUESTION.

(To the KdltorJ Sir, —It must not be inferred that criticism naturally implies antagonism, and the above question is of such farreaching importance that every credit is due to those who now seek to grapple with it.

Your leader of the 20th inst. is an able treatise on the subject, and an impartial one; but I still maintain that there are grave objections to the scheme, though it may prove to be the most practicable.

The first objections is that the Waitemata Harbour is (as I have previously stated), refilled to a very large extent by the return of the same bodies of water, which is not the case, in many, or in fact, most harbours.

Doctor Purdy's report to the Devonport Council would have been highly satisfactory, were it not for his warning against eating oysters taken from the locality, which may be accepted as an absolute contradiction of the assertion that sea-water so quickly renders innocuous the organic matter in sewage; on which assertion the success of the scheme appears to be baced. It rather tends to prove that the drainage from some five thousand inhabitants, contaminates sea-water in the immediate vicinity of the outfall, and that being so, what will be the extent of the contamination caused by the discharge from a large city. But there is another question arising from the first, namely, the anexation of the Hauxaki Native Lande. If the scheme is to be adopted, why not reclaim the large areas of shallow water on the Hauraki side of Hobson Bay, which could be done at a comparatively small cost, as the water is very shallow.

It appears to mc to be most unjust to take from the always friendly natives of Hauraki any portion of the comparitively small reserves remaining to them out of their once splendid heritage; above all, the very homes in which they and their fathers have lived for generations. —Yours, etc, CECIL H. CLUiKAED. Devonport.