UNDERGROUND WATER PLEA FOR CO OPERATION OF BOARD AND COUNCIL

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31248, 21 December 1966, Page 20

UNDERGROUND WATER PLEA FOR CO OPERATION OF BOARD AND COUNCIL

especially written for "The Press"

by

GEORGE JOBBERY'S, C.B.E., M.A. , D.Sc..

Fmeritut Professor

of Geography in the University of Canterbury.)

Out of a lifetime of interest in the study of water in all its forms on or in the ground, and seven consecutive terms (21 years in all) of service on the North Canterbury Catchment Board, I am more than interested in the recent argument about a new underground water authority. I can see no reason for anybody to get “steamed up” about it There is no need whatever for any new authority; all the machinery necessary for conservation and control already exists. All that is needed is a little reasonable and sensible co-operation between the City Council and the Catchment Board. I hope they will get together and fix it up.

To support my plea for this, a look back over some recent history might help. The first really systematic and precise survey of the form and structure of the Canterbury Plain, its surface soils, and the water above and below the ground dates only from the slump years of the 19305, when Gordon Beck set up the Levels irrigation scheme and turned the water of the Rangitata into the Rakaia. Beck’s Leadership Gathering around him a group of very bright young men—engineers, agricultural scientists, pedologists, geologists, and the like—he produced one of the first detailed contour maps (of Ashburton County), and pioneered the use of aerial photography with van Asch’s magnificent aerial obliques from which the model of Canterbury was made for the 1940 New Zealand Centennial Exhibition. To all these young men Beck gave useful jobs in a world that otherwise seemed to have no place for them. An engineer himself, he assembled any knowledge any branch of science could give to help in his understanding of water control. He would tell me often of his belief that an engineer could never have too much science; what he himself did not have he knew where to get. For its time, the Rangitata diversion scheme was a spectacular success.

Conservation Act Gordon Beck went on from there to be one of the principal architects of the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Act of 1941. It was from him that Mr Robert Semple, surely one of the most picturesque figures in New Zealand politics since Seddon, got most of the ideas he would dress up so vividly when talking about soil erosion and conservation.

Whatever I may have done myself to help things along in those early days, I was merely one of many who came under the spell of Gordon Beck’s driving energy, ability, and imagination. It was at his suggestion that I let myself be put up for election to our first Catchment Board in 1944. Too soon after we had got the machinery going Gordon Beck died, in the service of a country that, I am sure, has never properly appreciated him.

The basis of the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Act of 1941 was the very simple idea that adequate control of water could come only out of control of the whole catchment area from the source of the river (or rivers) concerned to the sea. Whether the water falling on the surface runs straight off the ground, lies stagnant on it, or sinks down below to come up somewhere else matters little. The North Canterbury Catchment Board is a regional authority with all the powers necessary to control the flow of water on or under the ground, its use or misuse. 1 may perfectly fairly claim that in those early days our board gave many a lead to the rest of the country. In our first chairman we had another driving force who built up a smooth and efficient business machine. For him I came to have an abiding respect. While he would often tell me I was an academic with my feet off the ground and my head in the clouds, too guileless for life in this world of wicked men, I would venture to suggest to him that most of his troubles came from his too often wanting to get too much done too fast. What I want to make abundantly clear is that the Catchment Board is in every sense of the word a regional authority with large powers vested in it In Its membership rural and urban interests are fully and fairly represented. Moreover, the five main Departments of State are represented on it by members with full individual voting authority. The board has always been ready to delegate authority; many another local body has

i done its own local works provided these have met the standards of the board that has often been content to act mainly as the medium for getting subsidies from the public purse.

Need Now Urgent As for the specific matter of ground water under metropolitan Christchurch, I was appointed some years ago to a City Council committee that met but two or three times: we talked vaguely about the need for doing something to control wells and possible pollution, but nothing much seems to have got done. Need for effective control, especially of possible pollution by domestic and industrial wastes, is at last seen to be really urgent But since Gordon Beck's time we have come to know vastly more about the hydrology of the Waimakariri catchment, from the work of geologists, pedologists, botanists, foresters, and the like. If the Catchment Board, in exercise of the powers already vested in it could add an up-to-date hydrologist or two to its engineering staff, organisation of control and supervision could be achieved quite readily. To the City Council or any other local body concerned the doing of the practical engineering work could well be left. The City Engineer need have nothing to worry about though I must confess to a little shock at his having been reported as saying that the engineers he gets from the university nowadays have too much science. What we want in this underground water discussion is more science and less local body politics.