The Press Tuesday, April 27, 1926. The Waimakariri.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18676, 27 April 1926, Page 8

The Press Tuesday, April 27, 1926. The Waimakariri.

Since the defeat of its i>roposal to raise £200,000 to carry out its plan for the control of the Waimakariri, the River Trust has not said very much concerning its intentions. The chairman told us, however, after the declaration of the poll, that the deviation of the Eyre river would be gone on with, with such modifications as the rejection of the major scheme made necessary. What modifications the Trust has in mind wc do not know, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine that any diversion of the Eyre into the Waimakariri at the point contemplated can fail to increase the danger of local flooding. It is not at all surprising, | therefore, that a petition is to be presented to the Trust praying it to stay its hand until some method of dealthe Waimakariri itself is decided upon. The Trust owes it to the ratepayers to make some definite statement of its intentions, and, if the dangers which it set in the forefront of its propaganda before the poll are as great and as near as was represented, it ought to lose no time in reshaping its policy. In the meantime it is worth while to consider -nAether the constitution of the Trust itself might not be re-shaped. Not many people, perhaps, properly understand the unnatural constitution of the Trust and the real drift of its policy since it commenced operations. Since the big flood of 1868 the City and the southern districts have never been in serious jeopardy from the Waimakariri. This immunity from danger was not accidental. It was the result of the skilful and patient work conducted for many years by the old Waimakariri River Board. As danger threatened, so it was met, and the south or City bank of the river was never safer and the future prospects were never surer than when the River Board was superseded by the Trust. No complaint of any sort came from the southern bank districts that the protection was inadequate, and no idea was entertained that a vast danger was at hand which could only be averted by establishing a new and costly diain of works on both banks. The protection to the southern districts was there, and the danger did not exist. Had the old River Board been permitted to carry on, the same degree of security would have existed to-day. It was realised.. when the River Board was first constituted and endowed by the Provincial Government that the protection of the City side of the river was the paramount duty, and that should the river again become unmanageable it were better for the flood waters to find an outlet over the pastoral land of the Eyreton district or elsewhere to the north rather than through the City of Christchurch. That policy of maintaining impregnable the south bank "was followed consistently by the River Board through its long history. The risk was transferred from the south bank to the north. The north bank people, quite naturally, of course, objected to this turn of affairs, and set to work to devise a plan whereby the flood risk could be removed from the northern bank of the river. The outcome of that agitation was the creation of the River Trust with jurisdiction over both banks, and the extinction of the okL River Board. By that change the City and the southern district lost everything except the liability to pay 90 per cent, of the cost of all works undertaken by the Trust. The revenue from endowments by which the old Board.had met the cost of protecting the City went into the common fund. The control of the Trust and of both banks of the river was secured by the northern interests, and the City and southern districts which contributed 90 per cent, of all expenditure became merely spectators of their own misfortunes. Works paid for to the extent of 90 per cent, by the City and southern districts were established on the north bank to give security to the pastoral and other areas along that bank, and the abso-

lute protection hitherto enjoyed by the City and southern districts vanished.. This was the calculated policy of the dominant element on the Trust: to throw the risk back to the southern bank and to give protection to the northern interests.