MONDAY March 16, 1903. Nelson Evening Mail STRAHGER EXPERTS AND THE DRAINAGE SCHEME. MORE WASTE OF MONEY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 51, 16 March 1903, Page 2

MONDAY March 16, 1903. Nelson Evening Mail STRAHGER EXPERTS AND THE DRAINAGE SCHEME. MORE WASTE OF MONEY.

FOR some reason best known to itself, the Nelson City Council has decidel to " lard the fatted capon " by getting a new arrival in the colony to report upon the drainage scheme for Nelson wnich has been adopted by the Council by a majority of one, and whuh proposes to empty a sewage effluent inta the snallo.vs of the harbour virtually in the heart of this city. The cost of the report is to be £25, and it seom.s to be hoped by the upholders of the Mestayer scheme that, as Mr Cutler, the Sydney engineer, is a brand-new arrival who cannot possibly know anything of the local conditions of Nelson, a report from him must oJ necessity carry considerably more weight with the ratepayers as a persuasive agent than the views and convictions of old residents of those who have mado the well-being of the city their special duty. Nelson has rather a notoriety for "cottoning to new arrivals more than any other community in the colony. / r only needs long residence to enable the greatest authority on any given subject possible to lose influence among a certain section. On the othei- hand, the new-comer, while he is such, is creditad with almost superhuman knowledge of all kinds of subjects. Mr Cutler may be the j greatest living authority, for all we I know, on drainage questions. But till he came on a flying visit to the colony from another colodv where

the conditions are quite different, j there were a number of City Conn- ' cillors prepared to uphold Mr Mestayer through thick and thin as the greatest possible authority on the same subject, from whose dictum there was no appeal, and whose drainage scheme must of necessity be perfection itself. Only the other day one Councillor referred to Mr Mestayer as the greatest authority on drainage in the Southern Hemisphere. This Councillor has since voted to procure the Cutler report at a cost of £2 5. What has Mr Mestayer done to cease being the final authority ? Has he come to Nelson too often, and thus b come a familiar figure — of the usual home prophet who has no honour in his own country 1 * * .* * 1 he small majority of the Council Who are partisans of the project to spoil for ever and depreciate the area where it is proposed to empty the drainage effluent from Mr Mestaycr's scheme seem utterly nnablo to realise that tho defeot in the project is not in itself but in the circumstance that, with deep water quite near and av&ilabie at little, if any, extra cost, shallows dangerously near the heart of the city are chosen as the site of a sewage discharge. No expert — not all the experts in the world — can alter, improve, explain away, or amend the fact that, with drainage operations centralised in this vicinity, possibilities of future reclamation and settlement for business or residential purposes will bo rendered absolutely remote, and that the city will give up to the sewerage scheme an area whose prospective value is almost incalculabl ■. This would bo done in the face of the obvious facility for deep water discharge less than a mile further. The Chief Health Officer, Dr Mason, has admitted the advisableness of taking the effluent to deep water in preference to discharging it on the Maitai shallows* UMr Cutler, the brandnew arrival from Sydney, to be regarded as a greater authority than even Dr Mason on this point (mould ho decide in favour of the Maitai partisans r" But let as hasten to point out that even Dr Mason ought still to cxrry the weight of a comparatively now arrival in the colony. He has not been here bo very long as to be altogether handicapped out of the race by absolute strangers; * • * * ■

Mr Cutler, from Sydney, now consulting in regard to. the Dunedin drainage scheme, may be a; great, the greatest, living authority on drainage works. But he cannot tell the Nelson people more than they already know of the conditions of their own mud-fiat ; noti can he convince them that, with deep water close at hahd, sewage in any form, modern or ancient, should be emptied on shallows, into a stream on the point ol* losing itself iii those shallows,' or incidentally on a fareshcre in tha very heart of the city, and in a line with a prevailing summer oreeze. He cahnct tell the people mure than they already irmw in regard to a septic tank system Which is nowhere regarded as complete unless there be anaerobic and aerobic tanks, that ia to say, a sealed, tank and a filter bed , and an aren for the operation of the processes prior to discharge* of the filtrate remote from population. lie cannot tell the people more tham Hifcy know Of thfl evil done already by sewage discharge in the vicinity under discussion, or of the patent fact that, with the discharge of a brown r (fluent— not a filtrate— from a tank which is neither completely anaerobic nor completely aerobic perpetually centralised in, the locality, the removal by reclamation of the accumulations of years of former discharge/ is hardly likely to be undertaken by either private or public enterprise.

Under these conditions the employment of Mr Cutler to report en the scheme of . Mr Mestayer, who till now has been legarded by a section of the City Council as the very last authority possible on drainage, is a mere waste of good money. No one< questions, or is likely to question, Mr Mestayer'sability to ca/rr]j>out a drainage project. No ohe questions the probability of the suggested scheme being good enough for all practical purposes if only the effluent from the 1 roposed tank be, taken to the deep water so ready to hand. But ! no one, least of ail, we hope, the ratepayers and the Harbour Board, is likely to consent to the .spoiling of a vicinity which is admitted and Known to possess greati potentialities of future value, merely because a' st ranged who knows nothing ol our local conditions may happen to hear oui ,i recommendation) in that direction. In these circumstances, the ability o4 Mr Mestayer not" being m any manner of doubt so far adwc are aware, it is difficult io see what good a report from Mr Uitier will achieve, or): how it will ?■!■ n} c P resent situation— unless like Balaam, he remains <o curse when sent, for to bless, and upholds thd contention for a deep-water discharge, in view of the unauthorised expenditure of the ratepayers' money on an unremuherative municipal building jvhich will cost a quod deal more than the specifications show, with the certainty! of a tightening money market that may soon, send up the bank rate of interest for overdrafts, and with the small margin. lefh tot future Councils for expenditure on legitimate maintenance and expansion, it behoves the City Council to be very careful' of its outgoings. Hence, to 'throw away £25 as it is proposed to do on an absolutely superfluous report on Mr Mestayet's drainage scheme when Hie only point at issue cart be and must be solved without! expert aid at all is sheer extravagance.