A FLOODED COUNTRYSIDE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18679, 8 April 1924, Page 6

A FLOODED COUNTRYSIDE.

Periods of abnormal weather such as that being experienced emphasise how the dweller in the country faces the possibility of discomforts, vicissitudes, often perils, from which the townsman is exempt. When the waters recede, making a circumstantial estimate of the damage possible, many a hard-working settler will face the future with anxieties totally unforeseen a week ago. The community loses by their loss, but the burden falls directly upon them, and it is to them that sympathy must be extended. At the same time, without forgetting those penalised by the rising of the waters, it is not inappropriate to consider whether the floods which have submerged so much country are wholly a visitation, unavoidable now or in the future. To anyone who has informed himself in the least of the causes of land-slides and sudden flooding after abnormal rainfall, it is perfectly plain that the country is paying, in part, the penalty of reckless deforestation in the past. Hills robbed of their protective covering of forest growth pour down the water on to the lowlying lands at such speed and in such volume that the ordinary channels of conveyance to the sea prove insufficient. The loose slopes, without the reinforcement of roots and fibres, scale away into land-slides. The turbidity of the flood-waters shows how erosion is at work, carrying away the soil from the heights, to be swept out to sea or deposited as silt, choking the valleys further. Remedial measures are not impossible. A scientific policy of re-affor-estation, consistently pursued would, in the course of years, restore enough of Nature's protective mantle to remove the worst of the danger. Attention given to keeping riverchannels and creek-beds clear of silt and obstructions would hedp further. These considerations should be kept clearly in mind without abating the sympathy due to those who have suffered through no direct fault of their own.