ENGLISH LAND RECLAMATION

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 205, 13 August 1927, Page 6

ENGLISH LAND RECLAMATION

yyniLE the question of reclaiming land round about Napier’s Inner Harbour is engaging so much local attention, it is interesting te note a much bigger scheme that is in contemplation in the Old Country This has to do with an area of about half a million acres of reeds and marshes known as the fens, where 800 years ago Heteward the Wake made the last stand of Saxon England against the Norman conquest. This is now to be restored effectively to cultivation. A Government measure for this purpose is about to become law. Its object is to raise £2,500,000 and provide for this sum being spent by a board of engineering experts upon the reconstruction and modernisation of a scries of embankments, drainage cuts, and pumping works which were begun in the days of the Homans and improved and extended by Dutch engineers employed by Henry VIII. Queen Elizabeth arjl Charles 11. These works won back the fens from the North Sea which previously washed over them, but they are out of date and have fallen into disrepair.

The reason for this retrogression is partly because of the depressed state of British agriculture. If is also associated with a long-standing dispute as to the apportionment ot the necessary outlay among the 45.000 holders of land. These people are not confined to the actual fens,

which are below sea level but extend into the surrounding region, including the greater part of the catchment area of the Ouse River. There are, in fact, in all 2,000,000 acres which come within what is known as the “twenty-foot datum line.” The whole of this region is only five feet above the higher sea tides. It sends down fiood water into the fens, and requires channels to prevent waterlogging. The inhabitants of the upper lands have thus been taxed in the past to help pay for fen reclamation and drainage works. They have objected, however, on the ground that they derive little or no direct advantage from what is done. There have been tax strikes and resistance, and it has been found impossible in practice to collect the necessary funds. The new law is to deal with this difficulty. It establishes a central drainage board for the entire area, and by making she large state grant of £1,500,000 toward the initial cost of the works required renders it possible materially to reduce the share to be borne by the uplands. Incidentally, it may expedite the reclamation to agriculture of vet more mud-flats that are still neither land nor water in and around that portion of the North Sea appropriately known as The Wash.