WAIMAKARIRI POWER SCHEME.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17861, 6 September 1923, Page 11

WAIMAKARIRI POWER SCHEME.

10 TUB BDITOB 01 "TEE PMSS." Sir, —What would happen to Christchurch, to Kaiapoi, and the intervening villages if the proposed dam at Staircase Gully were to meet with the same fate that has befallen so many works of the kind in America and elsewhere? The river is even now regarded as a menace to the city, but if an artificial lake formed by a dam 150 ft high were to break its bounds, then good-bye to Christchurcli, to Kaiapoi, and to all the fertile wheat lands of this part of Canterbury. Nothing would be left but a bare expanse of shingle. In an earthquake country like New Zealand, the risk of damage to the dam is no negligible quantity, and there are not a few who think with me that to try to hold back a treacherous river like the, Waimakariri with a 150 ft dam is nothing short of courting a disaster of the first magnitude. I note from the cables that two dams have collapsed within the past week, and one, if not both, was in America. Was it not chiefly at the solicitation of the Christchurch people that at great expense the taxpayers of the Dominion have given us the Lake Coleridge supply? If so, we are morally bound to support it; to do otherwise would be anything but honourable. —Yours, etc., C. A. TOBIN. Glan-Yr-Afon," Christchurch.