PROBLEMS AT LYTTELTON

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28415, 23 October 1957, Page 7

PROBLEMS AT LYTTELTON

Dredging And j Wave Action Lyttelton was the only natural harbour in the world which had I tu have a mole or breakwater to j break the action of rolling seas. I members of the Harbours Boards’ | Executive Officers’ Association 1 were told by the board's chairi man (Mr W. P. Glue) when he ’ welcomed delegates to the annual j conference yesterday. No rivers, bringing down rubbish and tree stumps, poured into ’ the harbour. Banks Peninsula stopped the drift of shingle from the Canterbury Bight to the harbcur mouth, and Scarborougn Head blocked the drift of sand from the Waimakariri river, said Mi Glue. But the rollers meant | moles and the fall of loess, a . clayey soil blown off - the hills by the nor’-westers, called for constant dredging of the harbour. I Both were expensive problems. The board’s area was 10.200 square miles, or one-tenth of the area of New Zealand, said Mr Glue, and 29 local authority voters elected members. It was perhaps just as well that the board did not have rating authority, as it would then have to estimate revenue and expenditure and balance by the rate. When the harbour improvement rate on cargoes and shipping handled exceeded the expenditure, the money was not given back to anybody. Only the big boards could operate on a harbour improvement rate alone, said Mr Glue. Congratulating the association on its work, and saying New Zealand was fortunate in the caliore of its executive officers and engineers, Sir William Appleton, president of the Harbours’ Association, said board members came ?nd went, and the real administration was done by the officers. The first conference of the officers was held 10 years ago in the board room of the Lyttelton board, said the president (Mr A. L. Burk). Results had been nothing but good, although the association had no legal standing and met only through the courtesy of the Harbours’ Association. It had never made representations on salaries to the Harbours’ Association or member boards, the members being content to accept the decisions of the boards. Delegates to the conferences have been invited to make an inspection of the port of Lyttelton on Friday after being entertained at lunch by the New Zealand Shipping Company on the liner Rangitoto.