COAST LANDS NEED 200,000 TONS OF LIME

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 August 1947, Page 8

COAST LANDS NEED 200,000 TONS OF LIME

Dr E. Marsden, Director of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Wellington, discussing the need for lime on the West Coast, in a telegraphed reply to the Westland District Progress League’s inquiry, estimates that 200,000 ton's of lime would .be necessary to give land at present under grass on the West Coast an adequate initial dressing, and that thereafter it would be necessary to apply 50,000 tons of lime annually to keep the land in good order.

The Progress League’s telegram to Dr Marsden was :as follows:—‘Would greatly appreciate your .Department’s estimate of the.- deficiency of lime supplies on the'West Coast. Understood at our recent conference that you would make this available immediately.” Dr Marsden’s reply was received last evening. Progress League Comment

“The only comment I have to make on the matter is that the Ross Lime Company produces only 5,000 tons of lime per annum,” said Mr W. D. Taylor, president of the Progress League today. “In view of this great deficiency of lime in this district I am entirely unable to understand how the Government committee of investigation over two years ago advised against the Cobden project, if it did so advise.

“It seems significant,” he added, “that that report has never been submitted to the Land Board, for whose benefit evidence was heard by the committee and for whose guidance the report was prepared. The hearing was, in fact, a public hearing and there seems to be no reason why that report was withheld.

“Mr Mulcare and Mr Wallace claim that the report w r as adverse, but it surely cannot be that it has been withheld from the Land Board but disclosed io Messr Wallace and Mulcare. . “If the Committee’s report was adverse to the project,” continued Mr Taylor, “I can see no reason whatever for its non-publication. On the | contrary, publication of its contents, i if adverse,, would support the Land; Board’s adverse decision made two I

years ago. Its suppression, on the other hand, forces one to doubt whether it was, it fact, adverse, since no good purpose could be served by its suppression, if the report was against the utilisation of the Cobden lime deposits. “Public Uneasiness” “If, however, the report was favourable, then its suppression was essential if the application for a lime licence was to be rejected. There ispublic uneasiness, as to whether the committee’s report, was favourable or adverse to the Cobden scheme and that uneasiness will only be dispelled

by publication of the report.” If the report was adverse, concluded Mr Taylor, the Lands Department had nothing to fear from disclosure of its contents. He urged, therefore, that, the contents of the report be ,divulged publicly, whether favourable or adverse to the Cobden ■proposal. - - t