£66,000 DUMPED IN MUD?

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 965, 7 May 1930, Page 1

£66,000 DUMPED IN MUD?

Thames Harbour Scheme IMPASSE ARISES OVER £4,000 Government’s Hostile Report THE SUN'S Special Reporter m , n „ THAMES, Today. DLRIMj the last five or six years the Borough of Thames has spent £.66,000 in an attempt to make an all-tide seaport. For all the value the district has yet obtained from the scheme, the ratepayers might as well have dumped 66,000 sovereigns over the end of the wharf, is the opinion of many members of the Harbour Board. But there are those who claim that the expenditure of an additional £4,000 will turn dismal failure into unqualified success.

Thames ratepayers, however, appear t 0 have chilled to the whole business. Government assistance appears to he the alternative to abandonment of •he entire works. The Thames Harbour Board has made several attempts -o eniist the sympathy of the Marine Department. A report by Public Works engineers to the Minister of 'larine lies in Wellington, and the harbour chairman has seen something of •M finding. “Adverse” is stamped all over It.

WHAT THE SCHEME PLANS In a word, the Thames Harbour scheme contemplates a rectangular baain. or “pool,” bounded by boulder embankments. Two sides are formed of halt-tide sea walls, the others being full-tide. Shipping is admitted through a beaconed entrance at the seaward angle contained by the convtrgence of the half-tide walls. A comprehensive part of the plan wag the dredging and channelling of the bool. Herein lies the trouble. A '.arge hole scooped by a £14,000 dredge -which incidentally ceased work in November, 1928 —has silted up so that the last state of the Thames harbour is no better than the first. The other day the motor vessel Port Waikato experienced no end of trouble in making an entrance. Members of the Harbour Board describe the state of the port as “deplorable,” a “dumping ground for silt.” Others say, “We are In the soup,” and “we have come to the end of our tether.” FEELING RUNS HIGH ’ Feeling among the townspeople rims high. So enamoured of the idea were these ratepayers when eight years ago the Thames Harbour improvement delegation, a self-constituted body, stumped the district that they (Thames widen ts) agreed to assume responsibility for the constructional cost. And now within six years of their authorisation of the first loan, one of £ SO,OOO, the same people who dreamed of a fliourishing seaport and a boom«g Thames are sick and tired of it. Following on the heels of the big loan the Harbour Board, with Borough Council permission, committed the town to an additional £ 6,000 (in terms of special legislation) to carry on operations and to put in hand contingent work, the rebuilding of the wharf end other collateral but imperative ionstructicns. Saddled with what present ia a deadweight of £ 66,000, the town Is beginning to groan under the burden. Until last year interest and linking fund totalling toward £5,000 iere met out of revenue, but in 1929 ihft Harbour nthe

lr Board levied a rate of Id ■n£, capital value. For the curf*at year the board advanced the harge to 1 3-Bd, the maximum being -id. Illustrative of the unpopularity "f the levy this excerpt from a letter received by a member of the Harbour Board speaks for itself:

“I Have just got my demand for ratee. I wish I could get hold of you and f other members of the botrd and put you silently and swiftly at the bottom of the harbour!*

The Harbour Board which has im'.eftaken the hazardous experiment of jakins: an artificial harbour, stands divided on the not unfamiliar cleavage Cv town and countrj’. As mentioned earlier, the country areas comprisThames Valley and the Hauraki •alns have always opposed the scheme. Further, they have never "anted representation on the board, at were enfolded under the constitAct. They fought agdinst the Jea of a port but were over-ruled, al•‘lough by a strange twist of fortune ter found themselves with an ephemeral majority over their town br§lh-

time ago the board thrashed . 1 Waa * It had to comess amounted I * *t&lemate. The chairman. Mr. H. J • m ®ntioned that in view of the a Thames ratepayers could not T , *P*oached in their present temper r ,i. 0 7 issues were: (a) To try to obr\i«* 2. oVernrnent assistance: (b) to or u\ * j®VM>O themselves, somehow'; Ei hy* * et whole thing go. for minor work nothing has s * nce the dredge stopped in Si S? bMr * 1928 - Early in the followOovaSfH and shortly after the United b OUP n eat accepted office tho HarMini«t* 01ra sent a deputation t.o the Mac* 0t Mar ine, in Auckland, to Mr Pftkk Predicament under his view', end riit!?- sou Sht further information, eer year the board’s engin"aa *■ Adams, a local man. who the ori^ rni , s ? ione<i to cai ’ry out part of vojvo Mason scheme, to inWorlc.rT 0,000 • reported to the Public l* tho.,^? artment - He outlined what b n€K? essary to complete tho 'ha’nneMo dredging to extend the 'hat tho uT 1 ® hasin to deep water, so ■o v * ng tide would scour out han!? efore blocked the pool, as o»t now. He estimated the h .The department’s i?ii h- aav ° Paid a visit of inspection la ren]v r t Por * et * adversely. >-ar the I? representations late last "•Phed ./' linis ter of Marine telexed iV * rom reports I have rent > cannot give any assistance. W Ii. d ?V btful whether the harno‘ * j| t UP again. In '"formation received, tiffoi ;« nm - en . t vv °uld not feel jusworw .. ** B,Bt,n S to carry out the * Proposed.*’ Heco° UR PARTIES CONFER bOjJf an impasse, the Harj*y °f th» a conference yesterr r °u*h ® Chamber of Commerce, the and the Harbour to delegation. The object dJ? a Pon a method of ob- *** €rnmcnt aid - Three per- + the "meeting to go into fa!* 011 ground that the a - .Prejudiced the harbour iin the eyes of the Govern-

ment by publication of “half reports.” At the conclusion of the previous board meeting the Thames press was asked to give a full report of the conference. The motion to go into committee, however, failed by 10 to 3.

In the district the engineer has come in for a measure of criticism over the non-completion of the scheme, first for the £ 60,000 and later for the £66,000. “I have been astounded to see the extraordinary change of front on the part of board members,’* said Mr. Adams. “They practically alleged that the ship had foundered and that they had been led and controlled by the engineer through the whole of the undertaking and had apparently been hypnotised so that they could not use their own intelligence. As a matter of fact, the engineer is the servant of the board.”

In this case, continued Mr. Adams, he was prepared to take full responsibility for anything he had done in the board’s service as its engineer. OVER-GENEROUS BOARD Had the board not been overgenerous to its ratepayers in earlier years it 'would not have been financially embarrassed today. As for the scheme, it had been examined and pa&sed by officers of the Marine Department before it had been allowed to proceed. It was apparent, the engineer contended. that the board was on the eve ot’ disintegration. The up-country members were in the position that their ratepayers .would not sanction any scheme which would involve a rate chargeable on the country areas. The ship—carrying on the metaphor—must be in a serious position if £3,600 was going to mean the difference between a harbour and no harbour. Replying to a question, Mr. Adams admitted that the scheme first mooted was to cost £51,000. The balance of the £60,000, the sum of £9,000, was for contingencies. The additional £ 6,000 had gone in works outside the original schedule. Dredging had proved more expensive than the estimate, largely because a suitable crew had been hard to find for the dredge. A proposal, more a hint than a positive move, to extend the liability of the town to the country had been exercising the ingenuity of the urban representatives. The “hard-headed country folk” were quickly up in arms: At yesterday’s conference Mr. R. Coulter, Mayor of To Aroha, summed up the rural view with pungency: “We country members would be happy to be out of the board,” he said. “For you to ask country ratepayers to come in and help pay for something they did not approve—then it is ridiculous.” P.W.D. TO RESCUE The particular form the Harbour Board desired that: Government assistance should take, in lieu of finance, was that the Public YVorks Department should either perform the dredging, the board to pay the expense out of revenue over a number of years, or lend a dredge. In order to come to some finality it was agreed, on the motion of the Mayor of Thames, Mr. W. Bongard, to ask the Minister of Marine for a copy of the confidential report his engineers have made, and for a copy of the report Mr. Adams furnished to the Public Works Department, as already stated. “W T e still feel that we have been let down, on the £ 60,000 and the £ 6,000 estimates,” Mr. Bongard commented. “We still say we thought the extra £6,000 was going to complete the scheme and before we are satisfied that another £4,000 will do the work, we want to examine these reports and draw our own conclusions.” The conference adjourned sine die.