LAKE DRAINAGE SCHEME

Taranaki Daily News, 30 November 1932, Page 3

LAKE DRAINAGE SCHEME

PROPOSAL AT ELLESMERE. PROTEST BY SPORTSMAN. Asserting that Lake Ellesmere is a sportsman’s national inheritance, the Council of the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society has decided to protest against the proposed draining of the lake. That such work would be costly, that it would deprive 50 or 60 families of a livelihood in the netting of flounders and that the land reclaimed would not be worth anything like £2O an acre, as stated by the Public Works Department, were statements made at a meeting of the council of the society last week. The matter was brought forward by Mr. P. J. Molloy, who said that up to the present the proposal had been treated by the society as more or less of a joke. It had now gone beyond that stage, as plans for the drainage had been prepared. The lake was a national asset and for fish food others could not compare with it. The proposal was to run a wall into the lake and confine the water to a channel half a mile in width the land on the eastern side being reclaimed for dairy farms.

“I want to know why they want to meddle with our reserves,” declared Mr. Molloy. “Where is the man who would tell us to plough up Hagley Park and put it in potatoes for the unemployed? The lake is our national playground. The land to be reclaimed is estimated to be worth £2O an acre, but that figure should be more like 20s. “Members of the Ellesmere Land Drainage Board, which has control over the lake, are not in sympathy with the proposal. The amount of money which is circulated through the operations of sportsmen, who take out about £2OOO worth of licenses annually, is much greater than the rentals which would be received from the reclaimed land. Farmers would not give £2O an acre for the land.” - Flounder fishing in the lake would not necessarily be spoiled by adoption of the new proposal, said Mr. J. McKenzie, engineer to the Ellesmere Land Drainage Board, kx commenting on the discussion. Establishment of a permanent opening to the sea might have a .good effa bad one, he remarked.