The River Trust.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18677, 28 April 1926, Page 8

The River Trust.

We print a letter to-day from Mr J. A. riesher which, though it is very long, we are glad to find room for, and commend to the attention of all thoughtful ratepayers. What Mr Flesher says about the constitution of the Trust Board we endorse absolutely. We have in fact said it ourselves more than once, and welcome Mr Flesher's statement not merely as a confirmation of what we have said, but as an indication that what we have thought is beginning to be thought by representative ratepayers. It can hardly have happened before in the Dominion that the people who provide two-thirds of the taxation have been left without representation; or worse, have been robbed of representation. For the old South Waimakariri River Board of course consisted of nine members, four of whom were elected by Christchurch ratepayers, and one by the Borough of Sydenham, while the Act of 1922

under which the Trust is constituted does not separately recognise the City at all. Whether the City Members of Parliament were caught napping or could not have been expected to realise what was happening when the Bill went through, they realise the position now, and will not escape blame if they remain inactive in future. And it is clear enough, also, as Mr Flesher shows in the later portions of his letter, that the Trust is not re-

duced to impotence by being refused permission to borrow two hundred thousand pounds. It has the income now or in sight to pay the charges on enough loan money, if it were thought desirable to raise loans, to carry out the more urgent protective and improvement works which the present state of the river may be supposed to demand. Mr Flesher suggests, and he may be right, that the new cut and the main highway bridge are two projects which should be earned out at once. We express no opinion on that side of things ourselves, since although "it is claimed " and admitted by some experts " that those two proposals are on sound lines, there are other experts equally competent who have very little faith in the new cut, which is one of the purely technical questions, on which a more authoritative opinion is required. But Mr Flesher at least shows that the Board's recent proposals by no means exhaust the possible methods of controlling the river, and that they were not particularly happy efforts on the purely financial side. There is in any case a vast difference between spending £17,000 per annum experimentally for five years—it is less than we are now paying—and paying interest on loans for 50 years without a guarantee in advance that the money will not bo lost.