RESERVOIR LANDS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 87, 9 October 1935, Page 10

RESERVOIR LANDS

NOT FOR THE PUBLIC

A RULE WITH NO EXCEPTIONS

A correspondent, "Windswept," has expressed some surprise that the City Council should have proceeded against four boys who had trespassed on the Karori waterworks reserve to collect pine cones. "How the fact of boys getting cones would pollute the water I cannot understand," the correspondent wrote, and he suggested,- in conclusion, that instead of approaches to the Government to open Somes Island to the public, the City Council should open the Karori waterworks reserve, ias one of the beauty spots of Wellington. , '

This suggestion is not at all likely to be acted upon by the City Council, for a very definite stand has been taken as to the entry of the public into waterworks reserves, not only by the council, but by the Public Health Department. There are certain diseases which are readily spread through the whole community by polluted wate,r, and though the risk of pollution is perhaps very small the,rule is laid down, and insisted upon, that that risk shall not be run:

It was not, of course, suggested that the four boys would have polluted the water, but the action^ was taken | because a hard and fast rule had been broken and as a means of drawing attention to the rule. So insistent upon (its observance is the City Council, that not even a member of the council may visit one of the inner waterworks unless accompanied by a responsible offi|Cer of the Corporation. It is a fact, as the correspondent stated, that the Karori waterworks area is a beauty spot, but even more beautiful are the areas of native bush about the , Wainui and Orongorongo headworks—but they are not for the public.