THE HARBOUR BOARD AND FREEMAN'S BAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 10697, 10 March 1898, Page 4

THE HARBOUR BOARD AND FREEMAN'S BAY.

We feel assured that the all but universal feeling of the people of Auckland in relation to the conduct of the Harbour Board re the sewer at the Freeman's Bay reclamation will be one of indignation, if not disgust. Further than this, if we. know the pulse of public life, we affirm that the Harbour Board will have to recant its action or clear out of the way. We are sorry that Mr. Niccol has inaugurated his regime by a course of conduct so utterly opposed to the public interests, and what we feel will he a public demand, and we trust that some modus vivendi in relation to this intolerable nuisance will be found before public agitation reaches that point at which it will brook no opposition. We care nothing for the squabblesof local ami co-ordinate governments. We are cursed with too many administrative bodies, and if this sort cf thing is allowed to block the indisputable rights and interests of the people, will be neeessary to have a simplification of our local administration. The legal quibbles that have been brought forward to back the Harbour Board in its obstinacy are simply trifling with the subject. Legal opinions are, as a rule, a matter of fees, and no doubt a dozen lawyers will.be found to show that the City Council is in the right, and the Harbour Hoard in the wrong. The Harbour Hoard was till recently in favour of a reasonable arrangement with the City Council in dealing with this question, and the public congratulated itself on the prospect of the difficulty being got over and the nuisance abated, when the City Council agreed to do its fair share of the work. The Harbour Board having backed out of the understanding, apparently in "pure cusscdness," it will be for the people—the fountain of all authority— to declare its will, and to take such steps as will bring this matter to a settlement. The idea of the harbour and the city having different and conflicting interests that paralyse one another is preposterous. The endowments, the revenues of both are from the same source, and the affairs of both are administered for the benefit of the same people, and to allow a conflict to arise which would bring one section of the people's interests into destructive antagonism with another is raising a difficulty to which the people should require a solution. Tim city sewage was projected into the tidal waters. The Harbour Board by its work of reclamation removes those tidal waters further away, and on all moral grounds is entitled to share in the cost of carrying that sewage to the same tidal waters so removed, and the sewer requisite for so conveying it over the reclaimed ground is part of the reclamation works as legitimately as the seawall, or the smoothing of the surface of the ground, and certainly as much at least as the laying off streets on the reclamation, which is admittedly within the legal competency of the Harbour Board. The City Council has not created a nuisance which did not exist before, but the Harbour Board will have done so in obstructing the free flow of the sewage into the sea, or creating a long stretch of reclamation over which the sewage will have to spread. To shelter itself behind the subterfuge that tbe Board cannot contribute to a sewer because that is not reclamation, is disgraceful to the Board, and certainly shows a spirit of something very much akin to dishonesty. The Board can legally contribute to the reasonable completion of its reclamation, and as the City Council has made a fair and reasonable proposal to share the cost, the Board should be ashamed to even try to take advantage of a silly legal quibble in order to shirk its duty, and if there is any further delay in the suppression of this horrible and deadly nuisance at Freeman's Bay the people of Auckland should hold a mass meeting to express its indignation, and to take such further action as circumstances may require.