SPECIAL TELEGRAMS. NOTES FROM AUCKLAND.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 24, 29 January 1908, Page 3

SPECIAL TELEGRAMS. NOTES FROM AUCKLAND.

THE DRAINAGE SCHEME. [Br Telegraph. — Special to The Post.] . AUCKLAND, This Day. Speaking at the conference of local bodies regarding the drainage scheme submitted by Mr. Midgley Taylor, the Mayor said that it might seem that the amount involved was a large one, the estimated cost being £450,000, but thoy must remember that the amount would not be expended at once, as it would probably take about six years to carry out the scheme proposed. The latest valuation of the Auckland district (affected by the scheme) was £14,000,000. Allowing for an increase of 5 pev cent, per annum, they would havo at the end of six year,-, a total valuation of, roughly, £18,750,000. Taking the annual valuo at one-sixteenth of the capital value as £875,000, and the annual value in six years' time of £1,171,875, and allowing 4$ per cent, for interest and sinking fund on £450,000 — the estimated cost of the drainage scheme — there would be £21,375 ■which, on tho present capital valuation, was equivalent to a rate of not three-eighths of a penny in the £, or 6d in the £ en the annual value. On tho estimated variation, six years hence it would amount to a little over 4<J in the £ on the capital value, and about. 4§d oi> the annual value. NO RAIN— The effects of tho continued spell of dry weather are now very apparent throughout the Waikato and other country districts. The country lying between Otahuhu and Pukekohe, always evidencing a considerable need of rain, does uot appear, as viewed from the railway, to have suffered so severely as some portions of the Waikato, where the parched appearance of the pastures is very apparent, particularly on tho light pumico lands. The rivers and creeks are very low, and those districts that aro dependent on wells and tanks for their water are beginning to find their supplies running short. This is notably tho case at Frankion, where a water famine is threatening. BUT PLENTY OF DUST. Of course one effect of the dry weather is an enormous quantity of dust, which rises in almost stifling clouds along the roads and the railway. The excessiye dust along the lino is just now a * somewhat unpleasant feature of the journey between Auckland and Rotorua. Visitors who have arrived from the other end of the island during the past day or two state that the country in this province is not looking so dry as in the Wairarapa and other parts of the Wellington district.