Mt Herbert N-free?

Press, 24 September 1983, Page 9

Mt Herbert N-free?

Mount Herbert County may well become a nuclear-weapons-free zone next week.

Peace campaigners will present a petition to the Mount Herbert County Council on Monday, asking it to declare the county a nuclear-weapons-free zone.

A spokesperson for the Mount Herbert Peace Group, Ms Susan Snelgrove, said the petition now complied with a council requirement that it contain 109

At its meeting in August the council heard that the petition had been signed by 80 per cent of the permanent adult population in the county. The 455 signatories represented about 40 per cent of all ratepayers and residents, but many ratepayers live outside the county and own holiday houses in the area.

A councillor successfully moved at the meeting that the county be declared a nuclear-weapons-free zone if most residents and ratepayers signed the petition.

Another 109 signatures would be needed.

Ms Snelgrove said the group had obtained another 209 signatures. Petitioners had reached about 280 of the absentee ratepayers, about. 75 per cent of whom had signed the petition.

“Ours may be the second smallest county in the South Island but we still have to be counted,” she said. “The. nuclear issue is so important that everyone must be prepared to be counted or else there may be no-one left.”