NOLANTOWN MERGER.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 6 December 1924, Page 4

NOLANTOWN MERGER.

COMMISSION CONTINUES. PETITIONERS’ FINAL EVIDENCE. The commission inquiring into the proposal to merge Noiantown in the thorough of. Haivera continued its sitting yesterday afternoon and to-day. William iu. Stewart, a resident in the congested area, said his present county rates amounted to £2 I2s Id, but on the merger talcing place his rates payable to the. borough would only total 15s 7d. On the figures supplied bv the Town 'Clerk, his rates in the event of .all conveniences being supplied would amount to under £4. Mr O’Dea: Surely you are sport enough to put this issue to a poll ? Witness: The time for sporting is past. We have been putting up with the inconveniences long enough. Mr O’Dea: Then I take it you are afraid of the result?

Witness: No, but we; could hot get justice whichever way we went, and we had to come to an impartial commission.

Hermena Gunderson, Win. Page, T. Bosson, W. F. Eade and Alexander Phillips also gave evidence concerning the neglected and insanitary state of the Noiantown area.

The'commission then adjourned until to-day.

At 10 o’clock this morning the commission again resumed.

Thomas Henry Walker, who had been for twelve years a resident in the area, said that although he had a building section planted with live fences in Noiantown, he had come into the borough to live in preference to putting up with the conditions prevailing in Noiantown. His rates in the borough were only a little over £2 more than they were in Noiantown, and he had all the borough conveniences. In addition to that, insurance in Noiantown, where there was no fire protection, was 2s in the £IOO dearer, so that on his residence in the borough, which was insured for £ISOO, he was making a saving of £1 10 s on the insurance he would have to pay if he were in the county. Witness also stated that at a certain depth in Noiantown there was a bed of hard substance approaching coal, such as would be produced by an eruption covering a forest, and this substance had formed a pan, which had caught the surface drainage and directed it into the numerous wells. With the small sections it was not possible to have the wells far away from the septic pits. He had dug down about eirfit feet below this hard layer, but it was onlv off this lignite that water came into the well.

George Dick Maria, Moore, Albert Glasson, and Thomas Sloan gave evidence as to the absence of up-to-date conveniences in Noiantown.