Mt. Ida Chronicle AND ST. BATHANS WEEKLY NEWS NASEBY, SATURDAY, FEB. 7th, 1891.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XXI, Issue 1105, 7 February 1891, Page 2

Mt. Ida Chronicle AND ST. BATHANS WEEKLY NEWS NASEBY, SATURDAY, FEB. 7th, 1891.

The tremendous and unprecedented drought of the present season must have turned the thoughts of almost everyone, farmers and miners alike, to the subject to which we gave prominence last -week—the urgent necessity for the storage of our winter rains. The spectacle of long trains of farm produce arriving at the Dunback terminus for conveyance by waggon into the interior of Otago must stir up the most sluggish of our inhabitants to a sense of the improvidence of the present happy-go-lucky system of water supply. The sufferings of the miners are no less acute than those of the farmers, but their effect is naturally less apparent. When the grain crops for scores of miles around are but a few inches high, the turnips for the most part non-existent, and the grass so brown and brittle that it might be powdered in a mortar, the unfortunate position of our agricultural interest forces itself upon the attention even of casual visitors : whereas the minin areas present, in all respects bu hg personal activity of their occupants, the same aspect pretty well always. Everyone accustomed to gold-mining knows, however, what the effect of such a season as the present must be upon the yield extracted from the claims. And as it is within the knowledge of us all that enough water comes down from the hills within the twelve months to work all the known mines in the district if only it could be distributed evenly over the working time, it is natural that at such a time there should be a growing feeling that something must be done in that direction.

The recent change of Government is viewed by some as boing likely to conduce to the end in view, but we fear that this is a sanguine conception. The new Minister of LandH is, it is

true, an Otago man, but then so was ] j the last ; and while in the Atkinson i 1 j Ministry there vrere three Otago men, | c , | in the present Ad-ministration there is \ > | only one. or at any rate only one with j full Ministerial rank; Moreover, Mr. j i J ohnM'lvenziehas beenso consistent an | i opponent of the. Otago Central Bail- ! J way that we fear he cannot be relied I, upon to bestow much attention upon ] the' other requirements of Central ! i Otago. As for Messrs Ballance and j Seddon, it is quite clear that they j 1 cannot be expected, at any rate for ! ! some time to come, to understand the ; j position and requirements of this dis- i ] trict so well as Sir Harrv Atkinson < and Mr. Fergus did. While therefore we can hardly get less in the way of ] assistance in water storage from the ! new than we got from the old , Government, it does not seem to us that we are likely to get. any more, so far as the mere inclinations of the new Ministers are -concerned. We are inclined to think that.in; their present stage the ideas of the people themselves are somewhat too various and too ill-defined to be regarded as impressive by a Government which wants to stay in office by pleasing everybody. That there are grave difficulties in the way of a county distribution must be admitted. Those parts of the county which would not be directly benefited by access "to" the proposed reservoir would probably insist upon a special rate for such contribution being placed upon the ridings which would be so benefited; and this again would produce dissent and discontent among, the inhabitants of these ridings themselves, some of whom might complain of being taxed at all for the purpose. Moreover, the question of the apportionment of the available waters to mining and farming purposes respectively would in dry seasons prove a. troublesome one, unless it were fully considered beforehand. But more than all, from a Government point of view, the special claim of this district over others to such an expenditure requires to be carefully shewn—such as the. ,original cost and present position of the Government waterworks, the exceptionally favourable conditions existing as regards storage and irrigation, the statistically-proved abundance of gold within reach of the water proposed to be stored, and other cogent arguments familiar to our readers. Nothing is to be gained • by concealing from ourselves the difficulties which lie in the road . to success; and we have reason to t know that those to which we have alluded are felt by some of the keenest . advocates of storage works, and. pro-\ bably account for so little organised movement having yet taken place in L the matter.'' Unless a strong committee is got together which will not . only draw tip with patient care a statement of the best arguments for Government aid, but also be prepared with full answers to all the commonplace objections which •'will certainly be urged by the Ministers, the Tnatter will hardly assume a different shape to that which it has maintained for a long time past. No scheme-of this sort will ever be carried against a Government—that is absolutely certain. The first essential, therefore, is; to convince the Govern--5 ment of the day of the reasonableness of the demand for a completion, on sound commercial grounds, of so large a Government investment as the Mount ) Ida Waterworks.