NATIONAL PLAN OF CONTROL

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22437, 25 June 1938, Page 16

NATIONAL PLAN OF CONTROL

Combating Damage By Erosion SUGGESTION BY MR SEMPLE [THE PRESS Special Service.] TEMUKA, June 24. “To set up within the Public Works Department a department whose duty it would be to concentrate on erosion by river and sea, study all the causes and remedies, and make a full plan of attack on the trouble is the only way to fix this national problem,” said the Minister for Public Works, the Hon. R. Semple, when a deputation representing the Farmers’ Union, the Geraldine County Council, and the Temuka Borough Council waited on him to-day to ask for a national scheme to combat river erosion. “A rough estimate of the cost of preventing damage by the sea and the rivers throughout New Zealand is £6,000,000,” he isald. “but I am not playing the fool with public money until I know the cause and the remedy for the trouble. A good deal of the cause is man-made. And some of the methods adooted for a remedy have been comic opera and stupid.” Different bodies had been emptying their troubles on one another, and these pre-historic lines would not be followed. The Minister- was fully conscious, he said, of the magnitude of the problem, and knew all about it. The suggestion to make it a national concern had been considered by him long ago. One could not stand by and watch the heritage of the people wash out to the Pacific. Besides, it was not only the land that was going, but homes as well. Arrangements were just being made for a prevention of all the damage that had been done, at Little River, where homes were threatened with destruction. Prevention of all the vast damage should have been seen to 25 years ago. Yet it had been going on for all these years under everybody’s noses. Mr T. D. Burnett, M.P., who introduced the deputation to the Minister, caid that the people concerned by the erosion problem were not panicky, but lately had realised that there was a great need for action. Mr K. Mackenzie, chairman of the Geraldine County River Board, offered the use of survey plans that had been prepared by the council at a cost of £270, of the existence of which the Minister had not been aware before. Mr Mackenzie suggested that he might now review his offer of help. The sum of £II,OOO had been borrowed without a Government subsidy, and a lot of good work had been done with this on the river banks. Interest and sinking fund had to be paid on it, and the survey had been suspended, but it could be continued if there was a reduction in the amount required from the board towards the cost of the wo^k. The chairman of the Temuka branch of the Farmers’ Union, Mr Andrew Johnson, said it was a great mistake to have a body controlling only one bank or section of a river. Quite apart from local interests involved, the many rivers in South Canterbury were crossed by the main highway, the railway Main Trunk, and the. main power-supply lines, Mr A. Bisdee. who was with Mr Mackenzie, representing the River Board, said that South Canterbury had more than its share of rivers, and they were all silting up. The Orari riverbed was higher than the surrounding country at Clandeboye. Mr T. D. Burnett suggested to the Minister that there should be a greater co-ordination between the Lands and Public Works Denartments. The Mayor of Temuka, Mr A. W. Buzan, urged the destruction of deer in the back-country watersheds, and reafforestation.

When the party left the council chambers where the deputation was heard, an insnection was made of the two places where the borough boundary is threatened by sweeping curves in the Temuka river. At the south side of the domain Mr Semple was shown where 20 acres of Crown land had been washed away, and the domain was menaced, as well as a tower carrying power lines across the river. Mr T. G. Beck, Irrigation Engineer to the Public Works Department, said that though the foundations of the tower were 20 feet deep, the Electrical Department was worried about them. The stream is now about 10 yards from the base of the steel structure, and three months ago, when the Minister for Lands visited the scene, it was twice that distance from the foundations. Mr Semple made suggestions to Mr Beck as to how the cure could be made, with a cut eliminating the large bend. He made the same suggestion on the north-west side of the town, at the end of Cass street,' remarking that big machines would soon do the job.