THE VICTORIA CHANNEL.

Evening Star, Issue 10341, 15 June 1897, Page 3

THE VICTORIA CHANNEL.

TO THE EDITOR, Sis,—l think that anyone who carefully reads the reports of the Harbor Board, as contained in your issue of Thursday last, must come to the conclusion that the members of that body are simply going in for a further series of experiments, at enormous cost, without any reasonable guarantee that such experiments will be at all successful. The first of the sand pumps put on to the Vulcan proved inadequate, and a large and expensive “cutter” had to be supplied. Whether this “ cutter ” really does the work or not is doubtful. Even granting that it does, the Board seem in an utter dilemma how to manage with the material so cut. And those who appear to know tell us that it washes back into the channel again. That the Board do not feel sure of their position is painfully evident. Mr Robin, an old member, is reported to have said that “he was fast coming to the conclusion that the engineering skill available to the Board was very deficient.” They were told that the Vulcan was doing all that could be expected of her, and that the cut would be thiough in a certain time, but when that certain time came the work was not done. Delay was.heaped upon delay. “He believed that the Vulcan was the most powerful sucker in the colonies, but that her cutting apparatus was deficient.” Mr Allen, another member, told the Board that “there is a feeling abroad that it was a question whether it was worth while proceeding with this work. The figures were very large, and it was open to argument whether the game was worth the candlo. The cost of obtaining the required depth was not, perhaps, very great, but the expense of maintaining it was continuous. The inspector reported that there was not 16ft of water in the harbor, and to him (Mr Allen) it was a question whether this subject should uot be taken into consideration at once in order to stop the frittering away of money for no purpose whatever.” Wise Words. When a company wants to build a railway, a bridge, or undertake any great work the directors naturally supply themselves with information provided at the hands of experts who have made a study of the laws of creation and can estimate results. It should be so in this case. I understand that over £700,000 has already been expended in constructing this wall in defiance of Nature ; and now the Harbor Board would venture on an additional expenditure of some £17,000 or £20,000 without in the least understanding what the absolute result will be. Let any one with an eye in his head look along the foreshore to Anderson Bay and estimate in the most superficial way the rapid increase of deposit there, and then ask himself whether it would be wise to undertake this new-venture of dredging without sound and reliable advice beforehand. It ie a matter for grave consideration whether this additional £20,000 would not be better spent in walling the channel at the Broad Bay spit as part of a plan of reverting to the old and natural channel via Mac* andrew Bay. In the end it would probably prove the most rapidly made, the most easily kept open, and out and away the deepest for ever, without any of that sterna dredging at all.—l am, etc., Colonist. Dunedin, June 14.