FEN LANDS OF WAIKATO

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20324, 3 August 1929, Page 22

FEN LANDS OF WAIKATO

[RECLAMATION POSSIBILITIES DRAINAGE BY PUMPING. NEW USE FOR ELECTRICITY. / K A journey by rail through the Lower iWaikato at this time of the year reveals in a striking manner the large extent of country which lies below the winter level cf " tho river For mile after mile, flood waters spread out; in some cases form ins; veritable seas out of .which low undulations of land riso like islands. It i» not a case of abnormal flood,, for it occurs year after year, and demonstrates the fact that this part of tho Auckland province is more or less a partially drowned valley, or, rather, plain, for thero are certainly no well defined borders. Even in summer time, ■when tho river is at its lowest, thero nro still great areas of unmistakablo swamp, so great that it is acknowledged to bo the most extensive fen district in the whole of the Dominion.

It seems strange that thousands upon thousands of acres close alongside a railway should bo covere.i with rushes and sedge, and should remain the home of myriads of water-fowl when it is capable of being turned into rich dairy farms, or used for many forms of agriculture, carrying a prosperous human population and producing yearly substantial revenues for tho individual and for the State. Other Fens Drained. During the past quarter of a century, owing to the organised effort of the State, Aucklanders have seen the Ilauraki Plains turned from an impossible morass into fertile farms. It has seen the great spread of country which lies between Jlatata and Whakatane reclaimed from the wilderness stage and transformed

into dairy and maize-growing land. In each caso this remarkable improvement has been mado by embanking tho rivers and by cutting huge drains and canals. It has cost tho Stato huge sums of

monoy to reclaim tho Hauraki and the , Rangitaiki Plains, but already the newlywon country produces nearly as much

money yearly as the total sum expended on. drainage works and embankments,

while there is no doubt that in the future this production of wealth will go on in-

creasing until it largely exceeds, each / year, the total capital cost. If this 's not a profitable State undertaking, what is? Of course, it will be argued by those who tako the narrowest view of such work that the Government, as representative of the Stato, has not received, and will not receive, as much money from tho salo of land, or in the shape of rates and taxes, as it has spent on reclamation work, but looked at

broadly it has already received several times as much as it has expended, and will go on receiving an incieasing amount until the whole of the areas reach the fullest stage of productiveness, and continue these receipts while New Zealand lasts or New Zealanders continue to work. What is tho extent of the flooded or swamp land in tho Lower Waikato is difficult to estimate, but some experts put the area injuriously affected by floods or wet conditions at 300,000 acres. If it could only be made to yield £1 an acre it would add materially to the wealth of the nation, but much of the

land could be made to yield over £lO f an" acre yearly, judged by results obtained on similar country in other parts of tho province, and even £lO an acre is a low yield compared with what can now be obta ned from high-class dairy farms.

Pumping j Unavoidable. The question naturally occurs is why should such a great extent of potentially valuable country remain idle and worse than useless if human labour can make it productive. While tho Piako and iWaihou Rivers, which * once sent their floods at wiL over th'e Hauraki Plains, have been impounded and tamed, and the Rangitaiki, l'arawera, and other .rivers, which wandered at large over similar country further south, have been restrained, is it not possible to master tho "Waikato in its lawlessness between Taupiri and the West Coast 9 The Waikato, of course, sends down .more water than any of the rivers mentioned; but it would require no great engineering skill, and not such a vast amount of capital as many suppose, to embank it and its tributaries, and prevent them flooding the adjacent country. An important result of banking and the confinement of the floods would undoubtedly be tho deepening of the present channels, .which would certainly improve navigation jand ordinary drainage. The great difficulty which presents itself apparently is not so much the banking of the river and its tributaries as the fact that for some months in the year the river is some feet abovo the lowlying country. This, of course, obviates any°idea of draining the land bv gravitation during certain periods of the year. But if the river and its tributaries are kept within artificial banks, and their flood-waters confined, there is, after all, only the rainfall and certain springs to be considered. The rainfall can be dealt with by pumping in the same manner as it is dealt with in Holland and Bel gmm and many parts of England. With the use of modern centrifugal pumps driven by hydro-electric-power now available in the" district, it would cost only a few pence per acre to lift rain-water from the lowest drains over the banks into the river. How little this cost is can be gained from the experience of other countries, or even from recent operations in our own Hauraki Plains.