Council’s Attitude Criticised

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31984, 10 May 1969, Page 14

Council’s Attitude Criticised

Tt is strange that apathy is a devil at local election times, but when everyone is elected there is just that tendency to regard those who are not apathetic as interfering ‘do-gooders’,” Mr P. V. Neary, publicity officer for the Christchurch branch of the Clean Air Society, says in a letter to 'Mr‘G. K Woodward of the Hornby Progress League. Mr Neary was commenting on a decision by the Paparua County Council to restrict attendance at a special meeting—to discuss the control of pollution caused by a chemical factory in Hornby—to 10 residents who had actually complained in writing. Mr Neary had been invited by the progress league to speak on its behalf at the meeting. “History records with some emphasis that improvements in urban environments have often been completed by those who do not live in the area.” He said that in his representations to the council he would have insisted that under present circumstances sufficient day-to-day supervision at the Hornby factory of Kempthorne and Prosser, Ltd,

was not being implemented. Continuous perimeter readings for dust and fumes were essential until the initial operating difficulties of the fume and dust collecting equipment had been overcome, he said. Also the stacking and dumping of raw materials left much to be desired from the viewpoint of dust dispersal.