FLOOD DAMAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 125, 30 May 1938, Page 6

FLOOD DAMAGE.

A deputation which waited upon the Hon. R. Semple last week asked for aid to deal with £22,000 worth of flood damage in the Waiapu County. Mr. Semple countered with the reply that there was £SOOO of similar damage on the Wesfc Coast to make good, £80,000 in Taranaki, £100,000 in Gisborne, and an unknown number of hundreds of thousands in Hawke's Bay. It would, he thought, be necessary to spend £6,000,000 to £8,000,000 to keep our rivers under control if New Zealand's most valuable farm land were not to be washed into the Pacific. The serious nature of the problem is .emphasised by the Soil Survey Department, which'reports that rapia deterioration of hill country is being brought about by the acceleration of the normal processes of erosion which has followed the destruction of the forest blanket which formerly protected it. It has been the practice over large tracts to keep land originally won from the forest free of secondary growth by repeated burning. On these and other hill pastures the thin soil J layer, shorn of its protective covering, is j sluiced down into the valleys, taking with it the weathering and soil-making effects of countless years. Only by a policy of hillside farming which will provide for complete and permanent plant cover for the land, either by forests, or other rain-filtering growth, can the fertility of the higher lands be maintained or restored, and until this is done the country cannot expect to avoid further major catastrophes such as that which occurred in Hawke'a Bay a month ago. The Government has done much in the reservation of existing high forest*, but very nuieh more is necessary, and the problem requires tackling at its source —on the farmed hill lands which have been denuded by axe and fire.