PALMERSTON GAS WORKS.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 324, 28 January 1908, Page 4

PALMERSTON GAS WORKS.

AGREEMENT ALLEGED TO BE ULTRA VIRES. THE COUNCIL'S COMMITTEE.. There are important develftun&uta* pending m regard to the Palmerston Gas Works and the questious of municipal gas and electric lighting. At Feilding a movement has been initiated to challenge the charter of the Gas Company, and an injunction has been applied for to the Supreme Court on two grounds, Ist, that the Gas Company has committed a breach of its agreement in failing to carry out the requests of the Council to supply gas to certain parts of the town. This the Gas Company denies. Tho 2nd ground is the most revolutionary in that it holds that the agreement made with the Gas Company is ultra vires, in that the municipality had not power to give to the company the right to cut up the street i in connection with the work of supplyiug gas. Obviously were this held to be so, a concession which could not be exercised in practice would be nullified. The matter will be heard before the ** Supreme Court in Wellington next, month. v

In connection with the movement for munioipal gas and electric light for Palmerston a committee was sri up by the borough counoil to go into— the question of the Palmerston North Gas Company's position anfl the rights it holds from the council for the monoponly of gas supply and for the option of electric light or power supply before any other body or the municipality itself can supply electricity. This committee has prepared its report, which will, be presented to a special meeting of' the council at 11 a.m. to-morrow. We understand that the report is. practically on the lines of the position taken up at Feilding, viz., that the agreement made by the borough council when the gasworks were started was ultra viros, and therefore would not be legally binding on this council if it decided to municipalise gas and electric supplies. Should this view be upheld by the Courts it must obviously have a farreaching effect, and it is questionable whether the gas companies of tne Dominion would allow it to stay there . Certainly the Feilding case* will be made a test one and fought out from Court to Court.