THE HUTT FLAT

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 30, 5 February 1927, Page 10

THE HUTT FLAT

SPOETSMEN, WAKE UP!

VANISHING LEVEL LAND

SECURE GEAR ISLAND NOW!

Will the sporting community of Wellington come to the help of Mr. W. T. Strand in his efforts to secure for them Gear Island, Lower Hutt, as' a playground not only for the Hutt Valley but for all Greater Wellington?

The proposal, referred to yesterday, that the Hutt Biver Board should give to the sports bodies, for public use for sport, the Gear Island area •of about 160 acres, receiving in return the somewhat lesser area now known as the Hutt Park, is a matter calling for close public attention.

The famine for playing fields, and all sorts of level open spaces is chronic in Wellington. So far as flat Land is concerned, the demand will never be satisfied anywhere except in the Hutt Valley. You may point to your Miramar spaces, and other near-suburban flat land. It is all valuable, and not to bo despised, but it is not enough. Tou may carve out of Wellington's hills football ? fields, tennis lawns, children's playgrounds, and similar pocket-hand-kerchief flat plots, and these expensive efforts are by no means to'be underrated;, but when all such, present and prospective, are aggregated, they are clearly insufficient for the needs of Greater Wellington. Looking ahead, they are seen to be far less than the minimum demand of public sport and athletics. SJaygrounds must be found either within the Hutt Valley— the one big area of flat land to which Wellington has access by a level road —or else, beyond the rampart of hills. There; is no alternative.

THAT APATHETIC FEELINO.

The surprising failure of Greater "Wellington to fully recognise the, playground possibilities of the Hutt is paralleled by a complete lack of appreciation of the Hutt tributaries and what they should mean to the community in the way of water supply and protection forest. Wellington has stood indifferently by while the tributary valleys of the Hutt have been denuded of invaluable forest in order to make room for weeds rather than grass. In the same way, Wellington is witnessing the subdivision for settlement of the several hundred acres that constitute the heart of the virgin land still left in or near the Hutt delta, and the people of Wellington are taking astonishingly little interest in the matter. The Lands Department and. *;he Hutt Housing Committee, in their subdivisional arrangements for this great block, are acting with town-planning vision and forethought, but the sporting and athletic bodies appear to have no ■ represenative committee, or any other sort of authority, to watch what the Department is doing, and to offer advice. J-t is left for Mr. W. T. Strand to formulate a definite scheme for a railwayserved playground, by proposing that the Hutt Eiver Board should give up Gear Island and accept in return the Hutt Park, which, he is prepared to argue, is inferior for sports purposes to Gear Island, and is moreover out of the direct line of traffic and wedges into the industrial area. Whatever opinion one'may hold of this proposal, it commands respectful consideration. If the sporting people of Greater Wellington had been collectively alive to the interests of sport, -they would have moved in this matter before. It is their business in particular, and'they are not attending to it. Do they imagine that they have no concern in the disposition of these hundreds of acres of level grass land, so scarce as to be precious? Dp they want Gear Island, or do they not! And if they do not, have they no concern in the rest of the area that is being subdivided. The sections already disposed of number hundreds, but os do the acres still at stake/and there is yet time to look into ,the subdivisional plan of those areas where street-making has not yet begun, and to put the question whether sport is receiving its due. WANTED: A STOCK-TAKING. "The Post's' present impression is that Mr. Strand has found the right spot in Gear Island. But is Gear Island sufficient? Is it not time that sporting bodies took collective action to ascertain what their future requirements are, and how these are to be met? At the_ very least; they should take some active steps with a view to action on the Gear Island proposal. The main points are—(l) Whether the public and the sports bodies would be served by Gear Island, or whether another acquiistion—alternative or ad-' ditional—is desirable? (2) Whether the Hutt River Board would be served by an exchange which would take from it Gear Island, giving it in return an area (Hutt Park) less in acreage but contiguous to its own reclamation area at the mouth of the Hutt Elver? (3) Whether the Hutt local bodies that appoint the Hutt Park trustees are satisfied that this rearrangement would be of general benefit?

A stock-taking of the requirements of sport, as well as of the position of the local bodies concerned, would almost certainly reveal new arguments in favour of Mr. Strand's scheme. It is argued that the present owner, the Hutt Eiver Board, would be better- off with a contiguous area at and near the mouth of the river, for here is the chief point at which it is making history. As the board, with the river's aid, is winning for commerce 250 acres of new reclaimed land, it can well afford to incorporate the hundred odd acres of Hutt Park and to give up Gear to sport and play. The board is perforce becoming a landowner in other directions, also, because every victory over the river gives it land; and in this way, apart from the reclamation at the Hutt's mouth, it has acquired 70 or 80 acres of land, much of which is profitably let, and some of this land rescued by the board from the river is already being cropped by the lessees. This is being done opposite Taita; there is also a salvage of at least 25 acres at Western Hutt.

SUCCESS, WITH PRUDENT FINANCE.

Though riparian interests were allowed to drift for so many years, the board's protective and reclaiming work has come as a tonic, and it is seen now that river-control is beneficial in every way; so much so that the continued neglect of the river in the upper half of the valley (the board's northern boundary js the Silverstream railway bridge) ib the more incredible. "Hundreds of acres of the best land in the Hutt have been washed away," the late Mr. John Cudby used to say mournfully, in the pre-board days. ,And, so far as the upper half of tho valley is concerned, apparently the same old waste can go on, oven to-day. The Hutt Eiver Board has not only stopped the inroads of the river, established a successful counter-offensive, and changed a community : loss into a growing community-salvage. It has also done these things with a finance so prudent and strong that it is wiping out its loan-liability at a surprisingly rapid rate, and is progressively lightening the load of the ratepayer by transferring his burden to the payer of

shinge-royalty and land-rents. Shingle taken from the river has been so much in demand in recent years, and has yielded so steady a rteurn to the board in royalty, that the revenue accruing from this source, and in a lesser degree the rents from- reclaimed and lease land, have taken off the ratepayer the cost of the protective work. Without going into details of the financial position, it may be said that rate-re-venue is more and more confined to meeting administration, interest, and sinking fund; and in this respect the future appears to be particularly rosy, for in about four years, thanks to the sinking fund, the principal loan £48,000) will be paid off, and the remaining loan liabilities are less than one-third of that amount.

So the Eiver Board does not need Gear Island, and the exchange will not burden the ratepayers.

By far the greater part of the Eiver Board's ratepayers belong to the Lower Hutt Borough. There are 2120 of them, as against 260 in Petone Borough and 436 in Hutt County.' And people in the Lower Hutt Borough pay about seventenths of the Eiver Board's rates.

The financial position is largely due to the sound work of the pioneers of the River Board, among whom stand out the late Mr. B. J. Eiddiford and the late Mr. Dynot Sladden.