THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1929 SMALL MEN’S RIGHTS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIX, Issue 220, 4 September 1929, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1929 SMALL MEN’S RIGHTS

Readers of the “Tribune” would find in yesterday’s issue a report of what passed when the chairman of the H.B. Rivers Board (Mr. W. G. Jarvis) and its engineer (Mr. F. C. Hay) attended the previous day’s meetings of the Napier Borough Council and the Napier Chamber of 'Commerce to solicit the support of those bodies for the Bill which tho Board is now promoting before Parliament. There was also to be found in the same ;ssue a report of the statement which the chairman laid before a meeting of tho Board that forenoon. Both of these require something more than mere passing notice. Dealing first with what was placed before tho two Napier bodies, attention is drawn to the engineer’s presentation of his case for the scheme which it is proposed to carry out under the authority of the Bill should it find its way to the Statute-book. Much could be written in reply, but exigencies of space necessitate brevity and reference only to the more salient points. In the first place, we have Mr. Hay opening with the statements

that the opposition to “the scheme is not an engineering one” and that “the scheme has not been condemned by any engineer officially engaged by the Board. ’’These are statements that cano-t be accepted as they stand. The objections raised are most emphatically based on engineering opinion. The Investigating Committee, consisting of three engineers of standing’ (Messrs C. J. Ba ker, N. Vickerman, and J. D. Holmes), expressed grave doubts with regard to one main feature in the scheme now being so strenuously pushed. They clearly indicated anxiety as to what the consequences might be, with regard to the area on the south side of tho Ngaruroro, were the waters usually carried off by the old channel of that, river blocked back by a floodgate such as is now proposed at its outlet. Therein lies one of the most serious menaces to a very large number of landholders, from Raupare to Clive, and nothing that has as yet been said on tho other side can be held to have met the very natural apprehensions that have been aroused. There are other comments in the report of the Investigating Committee which also indicate anything but unqualified approval of other features in the scheme.

Then, if our imforrdation is correct, Mr. J. D. Holmes was the Rivers Board’s own nominee upon the Investigating Committee. He may thus surely be said to have been “officially engaged by the Board”—for whatever further weight that may lend to his opinion. What he has had to say, outside the Committee’s report, on the subject of the Board’s present project should be fresh in the minds of everybody concerned. It is most certainly'in no way favourable to it, and most folk will agree that it amounts to an outright and emphatic condemnation. So much, therefore, as to the opposition not being an engineering one. The Board’s present engineer, according to the reports, has told the Napier Chamber and Council that the opposition to his scheme “has grown like a mushroom from Clive to Raupare.” This is scarcely the way to dismiss the objections of an intelligent body of men, many of whom have already seen their properties under water and who have good grounds, based not only on professional advice but on personal experience and observation also, for fearing that the danger to which they are already exposed will only he aggravated by the works now in contemplation. They have every good reason for being just as keen as any to see an effective scheme of flood control put into operation. Soi there can be no possible ground for attributing to them anything in the nature of factious opposition. But no one can reasonably deny them the right to make sure that they are not being made a special sacrifice for the benefit of others.

The objections by these settlers, most of them of small holdings and ■restricted means, and therefore the more deeply concerned, are not thus lightly to be brushed aside It may be that Napier’s business men and Napier’s borough councillors do not feel themselves called upon to disquiet themselves unduly about the interests of this anxious-minded minority. The gentleman who occupied the ch < at the Chamber of Commerce meeting went even further. It was he who-surely rather offensively, when Raupare’s recent sufferings are recalled — raised the suggestion, eagerly adopted by the Board’s engineer, that “the Raupare settlers want to get their paddocks freed from the springs for nothing and, so long as they get rid of them, do not care.” This itself shows how very little trouble the chamber has taken to acquaint itself with facts and motives. The seepage from the river, from which these springs result, has been increasing from year to year as the bed of tho river rose. Under the scheme now proposed that process is likely to be accelerated, and the small settlers in this neighbourhood have the prospect of seeing their land gradually transformed once more into - the swamp from which it was originaly redeemed. Are they not to be allowed to raise their voices in protest? Other aspects of the representations made in order to secure support for the Bill must be left for another occasion.