The Press SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 1941. THE EROSION BILL

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23415, 23 August 1941, Page 8

The Press SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 1941. THE EROSION BILL

The public has been well prepared for the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Bill by a great deal of informative publicity during the last two years. Abundant evidence has been set out to show that grave losses have already been suffered, and graver losses are threatened,

as the consequence of baring the hills to destructive weather action and hastening the

run-off into the rivers, which discharge it in floods. Felling, burning, * and denuding the forests, burning off hill pastures, over-stocking, introducing pests: these and other causes are familiar. A river control policy which stops

short at the banks, bed, and course of the stream, or is confined to the lower reaches only, is recognised as deficient. Divided control is condemned by its results, when one authority in a river area solves its problem by creating a bigger one for the next. The foolish waste of intermittent action is obvious in repeated expenditure of money upon protective works which, not being maintained, fall into disrepair and are swept away. Meanwhile, it has cost £225,000 annually, in the last few years, merely to make good the flood damage to highways and county roads; it has been estimated that 2,500,000 acres of land have deteriorated so far that they should no longer be occupied; and it is quite impossible to estimate the values which, there and elsewhere, have been buried under slides, turned to barren waste, or swept out to sea. Few will require convincing that the need demands a great advance in policy, and first of all towards a full conception of the problem. If protective or control works along the course of a river are necessary, it is not less necessary to carry control back to the hills and through the whole catchment area from which it is fed. The engineer working to prevent flood waters from breaking out over the lands about the lower reaches finds either help or hindrance in the lands policy, agricultural policy, and forestry policy that operate in the river area; and obviously hindrance must end and help be planned.

Administration

The bill is designed for that purpose. It treats the problem as a national one, within certain limitations. It aims at comprehensive and coordinated measures, planned and financed for long-run effectiveness. It is to be commended accordingly. But the bill is enormously long, necessarily so; and even when the machinery clauses are passed over, there remains a body of proposals which, it is to be feared, few will, force themselves to study through. Yet taxpayer and ratepayer—and farm-lands ratepayers especially—will be sharply affected, if the bill becomes law. Further, and more important, the question is whether the bill offers the most hopeful possible solution of the problem faced in it. Fqr those reasons the warning should be given that the bill opens a number of important issues, administrative, financial, and technical. First, it is proposed to divide the country into a number of catchment districts, where the problems of river erosion and land deterioration are gravest, and otherwise into soil conservation districts, where they are lighter. A Boil Conservation and Rivers Control Council is to be formed, as a national authority, under whose approval and direction or by whose agency all work will be done. Within every catchment district a Catchment Board will be set up, with a majority of elective members, and with appropriate rating and borrowing powers. Within the conservation districts there will be no such special authority; but the council will work through existing local bodies or independently and by the issue of regulations. Now each Catchment Board will be empowered to appoint its technical and administrative staff—engineer, clerk, treasurer, collector, etc. —and its first duty will be to prepare a general scheme for its district; but such a scheme.has no effect until it has been approved by. the Minister for Public Works and the council,., who may require it to be altered, added to, or scrapped, and order a new scheme to be prepared. When a scheme is approved, however, no. work under it may be carried out until the plans have been approved by the Minister and the council, who may, again, require them to be altered. In effect, therefore, a board i may easily become an authority without power to do anything but what it is told. This fact is otherwise emphasised. The council will be able—and rightly so—in any emergency to take such action as seems necessary in a board’s area; but it may initiate works at any other time by giving a month’s notice to the board. If there is no objection, the council proceeds. If there is, it is discussed. If no agreement is reached, the Minister’s decision is final. There seems to be no provision that, in initiating such works, the council is bound to follow, or even to consider, the approved plan, where there is one. In this connexion, perhaps, it is worth while to observe that a great deal depends on the board’s initial appointment of an engineer and other staff. * It seems unfortunate that, when the council’s approval is required for the scheme and the works that the engineer will design, his appointment is not subject to approval. Yet a new board may easily make an error which it will be difficult to correct, and may the more easily make It since highly qualified river engineers are not numerous; and its policy and good working relations with the council may be jeopardised accordingly. (It is disturbing, for that reason and for others, to find that the bill authorises boards to double or treble the offices of any one man, so that an engineer may be called upon to act as clerk or treasurer, or both, as well.) Broadly, the .position as defined in the bill causes misgivings, because it is one in which local power is created but also, potentially, reduced to insignificance. Parallels may be thought to exist; for example, in the relations between the counties and the Public Works Department. But the difference is that the independent functions and power of the county are clear; of the, Catchment Board, they are not. It is possible that when the catchment districts are defined,'the normal limits of action by the council and by the boards, respectively, will become'clearer. In the meantime the uncertainty and the possibilities it suggests are cUusquietiogt t

Finance

In the financial field the chief facts may be summarised as follows. A Catchment Board’s rating powers are subject to certain limitations. Thus it may not exceed £d in the £ on capital values, six farthings as a uniform general rate, and three farthings as a special-works rate; but maintenance rates and special rates in respect of loans may be added. Moreover, except where the Minister is satisfied that all rateable land will derive practically equal benefit, land will be classified according to the degree of benefit likely to be derived and rated on a graduated scale accordingly. The principle is dubious; the result is certain! Sharp differences will be created in the incidence of the total levy, and the limits described above will be average, not upper. But rating liability is not all. First, when a board carries out works on or near private property it “ may ” condition with the owner or occupier for the payment of part of the cost. Second, when the council initiates works it “ may ” condition with local bodies for the payment of part of the cost. But third, when the council executes any work which is supposed to enhance the value of private land, then the council is entitled to recover from the owner the whole or a part of the cost, as its claim may be judged by a Compensation Court. Payment may be spread, under a memorandum of charge, with priority status and at interest, over a period of up to 20 years. But if the supposed betterment is destroyed or impaired or turns out to have been over-estimated, the owner has no redress but in the council’s grace. It is clearly unfair that judicial machinery should be set up to judge and impose a claim but none to provide a remedy against error or change. The major point, however, is that a land-owner’s obligations, in prospect, may be increased by serial and sudden leaps. Both board and council may be at him with special claims, over and above his dues as a classified ratepayer; as a taxpayer he will again be reached through the bill; and there are other possibilities, such as arise through the right of the council, with the Minister’s consent, to supersede a board which it considers inefficient, through the right of entry and use conferred on council and board alike, and through certain regulative powers. The general question arises whether greater efficiency, greater economy, fairer distribution of financial burdens, and greater administrative simplicity would not be secured by creating a special branch of the Public Works Department, staffing it adequately, and working out ad hoc solutions of the local problems created by existing river and drainage authorities, Co-ordination

The general functions of the council include that of co-ordinating, for its defined objects, “ the policies and activities of Government “ departments, local authorities, and other " public bodies.” It should not escape attention, however, that the way in which the council is to set about this task of co-ordination is not prescribed, and that it has no power to compel Government departments to follow policies in conformity with its own, should that be necessary. Indeed, one of the last clauses expressly declares the independent authority of the departments of State, without any proviso to protect the council against action counter to its policy or damaging to its works. Clause 168, in part, says that nothing [in the bill] shall “prejudice or affect any power or authority “ vested in . . . any Minister . . . under any Act “ authorising the erection, construction, carry- “ ing on, or maintenance of any work.” In other words, the Commissioner of Forests, to take one example, is free to plant or fell, as, when, and where he pleases, whatever the council may wish; or, to take another, development schemes on Crown lands may be carried along tHe line of the council's policy or counter to it. The council itself is to consist of the engineer-in-chief and one other officer of the Public Works Department, the Under-Secretary for Lands, and three other persons to be appointed by the Governor-General. Its powers are wide, great, and new. They require wise exploring and careful testing. The body which wields them, whether' in its present form or as a departmental panel, ought surely to have the continuous and undivided assistance of a highly qualified engineer;-and this cannot be given either by the engineer-in-chief of the Public Works Department, as such, or by any other officer of the department, as such. Nor can the appointment of the chairman overcome this difficulty. It is one that has particular relevance to the problem of co-ordination which the council has been left to solve experimentally and diplomatically. It will not be supposed, of course, that this review of the bill is intended to be complete or that its unquestionably sound provisions, which are many, have been overlooked. But the present need, while the bill is awaiting its passage, is to direct attention to defects in its design, or to what appear to be.

The Post Office announced yesterday that the address to which personal parcels for prisoners of war should be sent has been altered from “New Zealand House, 415 the Strand,” to “10 Charing Cross road. London, M.CX”