REMOVAL OF POWER POLES.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20587, 1 July 1932, Page 9

REMOVAL OF POWER POLES.

-—♦ LIABILITY FOR COST DISPUTED. (rrtBSS ASSOCIATION' TEL"EOVIA3I.) WELLINGTON, June 30. Tlic Appeal Court was engaged again to-day in hearing the case of the Waitemata County Council v. tiio Waitemata Electric Power Board, an action to determine the question of liability i for the cost of removing power poles. Counsel for the Power Board submitted that the Power Board had statutory authority to establish power lines for the transmission of electricity and this right necessarily carried with it the right of support I'or the poles. The Power Board was a corporation having, apart from any statutory provisions to the contrary, all the rights and powers incident to ownership of the land. The right to support was an interest in the land, and when it was interfered with tho Power Board was entitled to compensation or damages us a private person would be in similar circumstances. He contended further that Regulation 2S, issued under the Public Works Act, in so far as it took away the right to compensation, was repugnant to the statute, and accordingly invalid. If tho Legislature intended to give complete immunity to local bodies the consequences of the regulation would be farreaching. A local body would be able to drive a road right through a generating station without paying compensation. It could pull down the poles and lines of a Power Board and dislocate its business, without compensating it in any manner for the damage done. He submitted, however, that the Order-in-Couneil abolishing the right to compensation was subordinate to the law and being in excess of its statutory authority was wholly ultra vires and void. If the Power Board's contention that it had an absolute right to keep its poles wherever it liked, even if in the middle or Ihe road, was valid in law, as he maintained, it was tho only remedy open to the County Council was the amendment of ihe law by Parliament. Judgment was reserved. "The centre of civilisation has always existed in the temperate zone," said Mr Gilbert Archey. director of the Auckland War Memorial, Museum, in a lecture at the museum on Sunday afternoon. As the iee age receded and the temperate zone moved northward, so the centre of civilisation had moved northward. The temperate zone not rnly provided the most favourable conditions for the pursuit of agriculture, on which civilisation depended for its prowth, but it also favoured the mental development of people living in it. "We mn.v rail against the sudden and varied changes in weather which we experience ill tlie temperate zone " said Mr Archey, "but the fact remains that this weather pilays a definite part in intellectual growth."