LAKE ELLESMERE OPENING

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25226, 3 July 1947, Page 3

LAKE ELLESMERE OPENING

CATCHMENT BOARD’S PUBLICITY “ ONLY ROUTINE JOB ” “We cannot understand why the North Canterbury Catchment Board is making all this fuss about the opening of Lake Ellesmere,” said Mr F. Coop, chairman of the Ellesmere Lands Drainage Board in a statement yesterday. “We have been opening Lake Ellesmere for over, 30 years, and have never received any publicity. , We considered it only a routine job.’-’ The Catchment Board also said that it was doing the work much cheaper than had been done previously, said Mr Coop. Over the last five years the cost to the Drainage Board worked out at between £lOO and £l5O an opening. It did on one occasion cost the board £9OO. but this was an isolated case and had occurred only once. The Catchment Board estimate the cost of their opening to be £l5O. Mr Coop, who is also chairman or the Wairewa County Council, said he had noticed also a statement by the Catchment Board’s engineer, Mr H. W. Harris, that Lake Forsyth had been opened this wek in one day for the first time. This was not so. The last two openings had taken six hours, working with two bulldozers, and 12 hours with one bulldozer, respectively. The Catchment Board had taken 13 hours to do the job with two bulldozers and five men.