NELSON WATER SUPPLY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 20 August 1934, Page 7

NELSON WATER SUPPLY

(To the Editor) Sir, —I read with/ a certain amount of pleasure and, may say satisfaction, your report of the City Fathers’ deliberations on the above subject which I take it is correct as stated that the amount of water in Roding River is ample for our requirements for some time at least, but from my observations at the end of th e last summer drought a man would not have required a veiy big pack of dogs with him to have drunic the . lot. However, once the pip e line is in' we have committed ourselves then and a dam will be necessary. Unfortunately the gully does not lend itself to damming without great expense as it is not of a gorge nature, being too wide at any point that I have noticed. Still, we will bungle through as we have done before and one writer mentioned Mount street the other night. The Council, official I notice was in a jocular mood if. reported correctly and one wonders just why the sea does not come up to meet the Wairoa Gorge instead of the w r ater running down to the sea. To say that there is only Bft of fall in the mile in the Gorge surely is a mistake, at any rate my levels show, nearly four times that, in fact there must be more than Bft of fall on the Plains after the river leaves the Gorge. My proposed dam, with the emphasis on the proposed, as a writer said the other night, would be at,a natural barrage about four miles up the Gorge. Never mind the Roding and the Lee, leave them to the Council for domestic water. Unfortunately I could only get the water to stand back a mile and a half with a dam 60ft high. If it goes back five miles with a 40 feet dam I still say Nelson City there’s your scheme. I would like to ask the City Council through your columns, Mr Editor, if the Consulting Engineer, Mr Williams’s attention was drawn to the Wairoa Gorge or if he only examined the three schemes the Council had in view. I am inclined to think he did not. My only object is to get us out of the ditch with regard to electric power for the Plains proper with the surplus for Nelson City in conjunction with our present steam plant, which by the way I notice with pleasure it is proposed to extend, this time without the emphasis on the proposed, as New Zealand to-day would have been much better off if the half of her hydro plants had never been erected. What is the position? Unemployment everywhere. If we had stuck to steam what assistance it would have been to the present labour market, which is now getting a miserable existence and many cases absolutely nothing to show for even the amount of money spent, a few weeds cut here and there but Nature grows them up again as fast as the operation is done. Mr Editor, w e have to thank you for vour sub-leader last night in trying to wake up the Power Board. Had they been more alive the possibility is our efforts would now have been combined for the good of the Nelson district ratepayers.—l am, etc.,

JAMES WYLLIE. Nelson, 18lh August.