Call For Better Use Of Water Resources

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32295, 13 May 1970, Page 30

Call For Better Use Of Water Resources

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, May 12.

New Zealand must transform its former unheeding exploitation so that water resources were conserved and made to serve as many uses as possible, the Minister of Works (Mr Allen) said today.

He was opening in Auckland the second conference on all aspects of water, convened by the Institution of Engineers and the Royal Society of New Zealand.

The Minister said that many recommendations of the first conference had now been acted on, and its encouragement did much to get into the legislation the Water and Soil Conservation Act, 1967. Public awareness had sincd been heightened about the importance of water to human life, and there had been cries for the Government to “do something about it.” “Most of you will know very well that the Government has been doing some- ! thing about it for many years, Sand has stepped up what it is doing as best it could,” he said.

Lack of trained people and lack of public awareness and support had frustrated the efforts. New Zealand had a better

: chance of seeing water pollution control done well than any other nation, said the Minister. It would take a lot of time to reconcile conflicting interests, negotiate compromise, change, consolidate and rationalise various acts. The results must endure as worth-while and workable legislation. To those who complained of urgent problems, the answer was that these problems were known and were being tackled within available resources of knowledge, manpower and money, Mr Allen said. CONTROL PROPOSAL

An autonomous and independent national water authority was needed to implement an over-all policy for New Zealand, Professor J. R. Burton, of the department of agricultural engineering at

Lincoln College, said at the conference. More than 150 men were now directly responsible for the administration of the Soil Conservation Act, he said. They were made up of four specialised bodies and 25 regional water boards. Senior technical and administrative officials were provided by a special Water and Soil Division of the Ministry of Works, set up under the act.

This arrangement had many disadvantages and there was a strong case for an autonomous authority, with its own technical staff. This would oversee all aspects of water resources planning. There was a strong case for taking water planning out of the hands of the Ministry of Works, which was a competitor for water rights and for public capital for investment in water development. New Zealanders complacently accepted that there was abundant water in the country, but such abundance brought its own problems of flooding, drainage and erosion. Even getting water to the public was full of problems. There were parts of New Zealand where water was in short supply.