THE WATER SUPPLY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21639, 3 November 1933, Page 8

THE WATER SUPPLY

After desultory discussion the council of the Chamber of Commerce decided yesterday to make no pronouncement on the question of the Auckland water supply, or the controversial issues at present surrounding it. Inadequacy of available information was the reason for this decision, the resolution being so framed as to leave the question open for revival later. The council can be well imagined refusing to take sides in a dispute which centred wholly on the relative merits of the Waikato or the Waitakercs as sources for a water supply. Lack of data could very well be pleaded as a reason for declining to attempt a verdict. The technicalities involved could also be cited by a lay body like the chamber. In the issue now before Auckland, however, there is a principle involved, and on it the Chamber of Commerce could very well have declared itself without seeking further information. The position was put by Mr. A. G. Lunn when he made the suggestion that a public utility of the importance of water supply should be in the hands of public bodies and not of private enterprise. This lead was not accepted, though it inipht well have been. The chamber, being the declared champion of private enterprise as against public interference or participation in ordinary commercial ventures, perhaps felt that it could not consistently support the principle as expounded. It might reflect that to the best of rules there must be exceptions, and that the water supply of a great urban population could be accepted as a proper sphere for public ownership and control without conceding any of its points in defence of private enterprise generally. There are no services more vital to a crowded population than the closely correlated ones, water supply and drainage. For a host of reasons both should be municipally owned and controlled, as they are almost without exception in British countries. If the chamber had affirmed the principle that the water supply should be a publicly owned service, it would have strengthened, not weakened, its position as the defender of private enterprise. Tt is to be regretted, therefore, that it did not seize the opportunity before it yesterday by declaring for the central principle, while refusing to commit itself on technical issues of detail.