“People must pay” for pollution control

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33052, 20 October 1972, Page 4

“People must pay” for pollution control

If the people of Christchurch and of New Zealand were prepared to give no more than lip service to the control of; pollution, and the environment and conservation people were not prepared to put their hands in their pockets, a false front was being put up, said the deputy chairman of the National Water and Soil Conservation Authority’ (Mr N. T. Gillespie) yesterday.

“Some people talk glibly of Government subsidies, but people must face the fact that if they want perfection, especially in the environment, they must pay for it, either by tax or rates, or both,” he said at the end of a two-day tour by the authority.

“The people of New Zealand will have to find the money for the control of

pollution on a national scale, and local people will have to pay for local control.” Mr Gillespie said the authority’s job in short, was to conserve water and land, and it had just been handed the task of planning irrigation schemes for execution by local bodies. This would be a mighty job, which the authority would tackle through the help of its 21 regional water boards.

While the authority was not specifically charged with the job, it had inspected Lake Manapouri at the height of the “run down” controversy, and felt that, perhaps, too much emphasis had been put on the lowering of its water level. “Lakes Hawea and Te Anau were also low, because of the peculiarities of the season. All I will say is that Manapouri was run down for the South Island and North Island power supply, and not for Comalco.”

Mr Gillespie said it was most proper for the conservationists to press the point generally, and the least that could be said was that they had awakened public interest in the need to care for the available water, to use it

again, and to stop wastefull uses and pollution. New Zealand had several streams and lakes polluted to a highly undesirable degree, but the harshest critic could not say that the authority and its affiliates, in the four years and a half that they had been operating, had; not done their job assiduously i and with success. He congratulated the North Canterbury Catchment Board on “leading the field” with many problem, its work being complicated by the fact that its district had plenty of water, but not in the right places. “The authority’s latest baby is irrigation,” he continued. “It was made clear in the recent statement by the Minister of Works (Mr Allen) that the field work will be carried out by the county councils.” Commenting on the Labour Party’s irrigation policy, as outlined yesterday by Mr C. J. Moyle, M.P., Mr Gillespie said that he did not think there was basically a lot of difference between it and the "Cabinet rules” just announced. I any case, the authority’s duty was to carry out Government policy, whoever was in power.