PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY, AUGUST, 17, 1880. HARBOR FUNDS.

Patea Mail, 17 August 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY, AUGUST, 17, 1880. HARBOR FUNDS.

The navigation works at the Patoa heads will be stopped about three weeks hence. The total sum spent on the breakwater will then be about £12,600. About £6,000 of this will have been expended out of the Government loan of £IO,OOO, the remainder coming out of assets unconnected with the loan. In measuring the importance of this work to the district, and therefore to the colony, it will be fair to say that only £6OOO of public money has been expended on navigation improvements. When this statement was advanced through the Mail some time ago, it was questioned with incredulity. It is true that £IO,OOO have been obtained on loan from public deposits in the hands of Government, and it is true that the breakwater has cost over £12,000. But the fact remains that only about £6OOO out of the loan was applied to the breakwater. The Harbor Board received from Government £5,000 balance of loan three months ago, and they have over £2,000 remaining in hand after allowing for all charges on breakwater to close of contract. The balance required to make up the £12,000 for breakwater has been furnished from

revenue independently of the loan. The Board will expend about £I7OO on the cattle wharf, now under contract, and the small balance remaining will soon be absorbed in incidental works about the harbor. It is well understood by this time that no river in the colony has been improved so much as that of Patea at so small a cost to the Government, That is the proper test to apply in estimating the relative claims of rivers to public assistance. Hero is a river made accessible all the year round to coasting steamers, with an entrance perfectly safe even in a high gale ; and all that the colony has actually paid towards that work is £6,000. The £4,000 balance has been and is being applied to other desirable works about the harbour, but having no connection with the improvement of the bar. Then against the £4,000 so advanced, and used for general purposes about the harbor, we must place as a set-off the reserves along the south shore which the Government arc taking from the Board for railway purposes, and for which the Board receives no compensation. Not only so, but the placing of the railway on that side must prevent the harbor foreshore on the town side from bringing that increased revenue to the Board which would follow quickly on the increasing value of the frontage. That increasing value will be retarded, but not lost, for the railway must be a great acquisition to the port, and must stimulate the commercial development of the Patea harbor, and of the town and district which depend on the harbor.