EXPERIMENT IN IRRIGATION

Taranaki Daily News, 13 September 1934, Page 2

EXPERIMENT IN IRRIGATION

SCHEME IN SOUTH CANTERBURY.

DEPARTMENT NOT YET SATISFIED.

By Telegraph—Press Association. Christchurch, Sept. 11

An indication that irrigation work which the Public Works Department has decided to undertake in South Canterbury was to be regarded as experimental in the meantime was given by the Minister of Public Works, the Hon. J. Bitchener, to a reporter to-night. The department recently decided to start with a scheme for the irrigation of an area of between 5000 and 6000 acres at Redcliffe, near Glenavy. Mr. Bitchener said he was not yet fully satisfied that irrigation ,had been proved sufficiently for its general application in Canterbury. He preferred to see some small scheme carried out before launching out oh a larger proposal. The area chosen, he'considered, was ideal for an experiment, and it seemed to him wiser to allow such a scheme to function for a time and prove itself before the department decided to embark on irrigation of any big area of the Canterbury Plains. The department would regard the South Canterbury scheme as a pioneering venture.