NORTH SHORE WATER.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 31, 7 February 1928, Page 6

NORTH SHORE WATER.

Mr. W. K. Howitt's letter on North Shore water is very bland, nebulous and M usual. Very proud of Pupuke. Says ift refreshing to hear his own opinions supported by other public men. Calls it "a real tonk." Must be! Doesn't think the Lake can ever he lowered. Believes in drinking deep and cracking hearty. Others do, too. Average daily eo* sumption: Devonport, seventy gallons per head per day; Northcote, seventy-five galloni. Plenty of water! Hooray! Let's use it! Doesn't matter about leaky taps, wasteful cisterns or garden hoses! Such a pleasure to refresh the thirsty ground. Great idea—let's call out the Fire Brigade to sprinkle the strawberry gardens—there's no meter on the fin plug! Only croakers like F. E. Powell, A. D. Dobson, A. J. Baker and the late H. H. Metcalfe, alleged consulting engineers and Royal Commissioners, say that the Lake will ever go down. Rubbish! Hasn't it stayed up so far 1 Why shouldn't it always do it! Why should wilful waste bring woeful want! Beneficent Providence put the Lake there and will keep it. filled no matter what we take out of it. Dependent on rainfall! Nonsense! Graphs, measurements and computations! Silly rot! Theories every time! Any trouble about conserving the watershed? Piffle! Local authority worried about possible contamination if section owners build on Lake basin! Ha, ha! They shouldn't be allowed to. Mate them keep on paying rates on land they can't use. We must have water, mustn't we! Or better still, make the dear old Government buy the watershed. We might spend £100,000 and then not get a pint more water! Wouldn't that be silly? Another bogy—what about the salt water coming in where fresh water used to go out? Too fishy a tale that! Make a lovely job for the uneniployed—stopping up the cracks! Anyway, water won't run downhill—if it does, will write to the papers about it! Naughty John Hislop, talking about the Wairau. Dirty water that—looks like beer! Got mosquitoes in it—"fiery-tongued"! Can't fly as far as the Lake—tongues set fire to their wings! Disease-carrying, too! Filtration! Chlorination ? No good! Rather have every* thing neat from the Lake, washings from the roads included. Notwithstanding its buoyancy Pupuke "must be augmented soon." How! Ah, that's the question! Wairau —a washout! Rangitopuni—too expensive! Otiha —too far! Waitakere—gone dry! Three cheers for 3lr. Howitt! He knows! Listen! "From somewhere else at a reasonable price." The North Shore is saved! Let the welkin ring. But— ■ when and where will this modern Mosei "strike the rock"jf M. T. ANDKY. Devouport.