WATER SUPPLY POLICY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21289, 16 September 1932, Page 10

WATER SUPPLY POLICY

One of the policy decisions made by the City Council last night regarding future water supply development brings a turning point in a question much, and at times hotly, debated in recent years. The city is prepared to continue making pro- i vision for those other local bodies to which it has been accustomed to! supply water, but it wants some assurance of dependable custom. Therefore, it will ask those who ex-1 pect to receive city water to state I their estimated needs up to 1950 and to contract to take it until that date. It will then proceed to make provision for its own needs and for its contractual customers. From the purely city aspect this is sound business. The system by which supplies well beyond city requirements have been developed and water has been sold without any binding agreement, has grown up in a measure haphazardly and needs to be put on a more firmly established basis. When the Water Supply Commission of 1927 said in its report that local bodies within what is called the Auckland water supply district should be entitled to call on the city for water on reasonable terms and at a reasonable price, the Herald was emphatic that in common justice the city should be given a guarantee of permanent custom before embarking on possibly heavy capital expenditure to such an end. That stipulation still obtains and has been accepted as policy by the council. At the same time, while fortunately there is no immediate urgency—supplies for some years to come are assured against any visible demand —there rises a question of considering the whole position from a broader aspect. That the City Council is the logical authority to be at the head of water supply development for Greater Auckland, and that its plans for the future are sound, are two points with impartial, expert endorsement. But if any other local body cannot see its way to being bound until 1950 by the city's tenns, it is not desirable, from the Greater Auckland aspect, that it should be left in the air, as it were, regarding future water supply. The position is one for reasonable consultation with an adequate spirit of give and take, by the city in its position of strength and by the other bodies with their needs and possibly their own ideas about policy.