THE H.B. TRIBUNE TUESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1925. HARBOURS AND RECLAMATION.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 13, 29 December 1925, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE TUESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1925. HARBOURS AND RECLAMATION.

Our Napier morning contemporary has to-day at length ventured to approach the subject of land reclamation in connection with the question of a harbour for Hawke’s Bay. This new departure is indeed welcome as some indication of a sincere wish to discuss the question from more than the solitarily detached aspect of cash expenditure, though that, of course, as we have already indicated, is one that has not yet been by any means finally disposed of. In the first place, wo take the Napier paper to concede that, as a mere incident to the necessary deepening of the Inner Harbour basin, covered by the estimates given, a complete reclamation of some 150 acres in its immediate vicinity will be effected. This admission apparently comes from a rather belated reference to Messrs Cullen and Keele’s original report. But it does not by any means go far enough, for that report proceeds to say :— “There would also be an area of several hundred acres south of the Taradale road, the property of the Board, which would be raised by the deposition thereon of spoil from the basin, enhancing the value of this land materially. This asset when improved should bo debited with the cost of dredging all the spoil deposited thereon, and the Inner Harbour works credited with the amount. We do not feel justified in naming any sum, but it would be a material amount. One million yards of spoil so utilised would raise about 206 acres three feet.” There is thus an incidental reclamation not of 150 acres, hut of over 350 acres—possibly as to 200 acres only partial- in prospect as the result of proceeding with the Inner Harbour scheme. The value of the whole of the assets thus created has to be put against the estimated cost of constructing the Inner Harbour. It is left to the Napier paper to say what the Outer Harbour scheme as now outlined, has to offer in comparison. The next thing to consider is what our contemporary has to say with regard to the value of the reclaimed areas—more particularly of the 150 acres admitted. “Some day,” it says, “they may be of great value, but for the present there seems to be ample room at the port for all present requirements.” It is characteristic of Napier and its press that it lives entirely in the present —they have not even a past they can look back upon with any great degree of gratification. We fancy that it will be in the minds of most onlookers that an up-to-date harbour established in closest proximity will give an immediate and Aery substantial value to these areas, and that this value will rise rapidly as the trade of the port increases. That, at any rate, has been the invariable experience elsewhere, and we cannot see any reason to be adduced Avhy Napier should be an exception -unless from the persistent failure of its citizens to recognise their opportunities. Even then wc may confidently depend upon outsiders not being so slow to realise what the future, not merely the present, offers. Our contemporary speaks about the Board ■hampering” itself with new land that will virtually cost nothing io make.. This is surely a novel view to take, even should the value be only pr<>i\o which it most decidedly i not--it. must and will

most assuredly accrue as soon as the possibilities of instituting a decent port, not a mere isolated harbour, are realised. “Even Messrs Cullen and Keele,” says our contemporary, “having referred to the possibilities of reclamation, conclude by giving their decision in favour of the Breakwater scheme.” As a matter of fact, the Australian engineers, in stating their conclusion, take no account whatever of reclamation. They expressly say that it “is based on the smaller initial capital outlay” and on the difference in the estimated annual maintenance. And as, subject to correction, we read the report, that smaller initial outlay will provide at the Breakwater only one-half the new berthage accommodation proposed at the Inner Harbour. We invite our contemporary to carefully re-read the report and state frankly if it can confidently say otherwise.

Our contemporary has protested against the assumption that it is indifferent to the interests of the Hawke’s Bay district as distinguished from those of Napier alone. We accept the protest. But let us see how it deals to-day with the bigger proposal for gradual reclamation of the whole o* the Board’s estate composed of thousands of acres of now useless land to be reclaimed by methods other than the deposit of dredged spoil. It says that “this has no relation at all to the Inner Harbour scheme.” The questions we would ask it to answer are these: First, will not the value of this land, lying immediately behind the Inner Harbour, be vastly enhanced by the establishment of a port at that Harbour? Secondly, will it be in any way enhanced by the institution of a mere harbour at the far-away Breakwater? Conversely, will not the expansion of the port at the Inner Harbour and the initiation of industrial activities to give it work to do be greatly facilitated by the reclamation? Finally, will the solitude of the Breakwater Harbour be in any way broken by reclamation miles away from it? Despite its accepted protestations, the inherent and inherited, and perhaps unconscious, control of consideration for Napier’s interests first peeps out to-day in such passages as this: “Everyone is agreed that it is in the interests of the town that the Whare-o-maraenui area should be reclaimed.” Then, again, “This reclamation is of the greatest importance to the town, and the Board musu be ready to assist the town.” Always “the town,” and, with all due deference to the accepted protests, very little but the town. Why in the name of reason and in the interests of the district—and particularly of the ratepayers whose burden will be definitely relieved by carrying out the big reclamation—should not that reclamation be considered in its relation to the Inner Harbour, when it is so obvious that each will react favourably to increasing the usefulness and consequent value of the other?