THE IRRIGATION QUESTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6647, 11 September 1889, Page 4

THE IRRIGATION QUESTION.

o (TFjROM OUR ASHBUBTON CORRESPONDENT.] To very many Bettlers in the Ashburton County, the result of the polling in the Eakaia Irrigation District of the County was a sad disappointment. The peculia natnre of the clause of the Act under which the vote was taken made the disappointment all the keener; but there are several sides to the- question, and in view of certain facts that have recently come to light, the whole blame of the failure is found not altogether to lie at the door of tbe Act. True, there can be little doubt that, had every vote that was not recorded been counted as a neutral vote — a 9 that of a ratepayer who did not care which way the decision went, or on the principle that j silence means consent — the majority of " ayes " would have been very pronounced, even in face of the number of voters who would have been compelled to vote if they wished to record their opposition. But at the last meeting of the County Council a discussion took place in which it was shown that even amongthe members of the Council themselves opponents to the scheme were found. Mr John Grigg, perhaps one of the most practical and clear-headed, and withal honeat-hearted men in the County, openly stated that he had actually come into town to vote in favour of the scheme, but on ! learning a fact about the scheme of which] he had till then been in ignorance, he had refrained from voting, and go allowed his vote to count on the side of opposition. Mr Grigg, looking upon the scheme as purely and simply one to supply the settlers ! below the railway line with water for irriga.bi.oxL purposes — tliafc is, irrigation in. the fullest sense of the word, for watering the land with a view to benefit the crops growing upon it — had refrained from voting because he found that for the purposes of rating to defray the cost of the work, and ultimately repay the loan to be raised, no provision had been made for classifying the land. He objected to land that was to receive no advantages of the kind intended to be conferred by the scheme, having to pay the same rates as land that was to enjoy the benefits of irrigation in its fullest sense. He had a saving recollection of how the promoters of the Methven railway had managed to classify the land through which their line was to pass — how land within a mile of the Dromore railway station on the main line, and more than ten miles away from the Methven line, had been adroitly included in the rating classification, and had had to pay for benefits that were only enjoyed by land to which the Methven fine was useful. Mr William M'Millan was much of the same way of thinking. He, with others in his district, had refrained from voting because of the injustice that would follow upon lands that were not to be irrigated ' (in the full sense already implied), having f to pay the same rate as those that were to enjoy the full benefit. It also cropped up, in the course of the discussion, that there were many ratepayers in the district who had held the same opinions as Mr Grigg and Mr M'Millan, and, knowing how the Act worked, had not put themselves to the trouble to come to the poll and declare their active opposition. THEIB MISTAKE. That hard-headed men like Messrs: Grigg and M'Millan should have run away with the notion they did, and with only a half-i aowledge of the scheme, is surprising, but the circumstances under which they voted all the same show that the Act after all would work well, enough, and iB fair to all parties, only it ought to be the duty of those anxious for irrigation to make the full meaniner of their movement plain to all ratepayers interested, bo that possible misconception could not arise. The proposed scheme, to execute which the loan of .£SOOO was to be raised, and to raise which the ratepayers' sanction by a poll had to be obtained, was not by any means the formidable thing that Mr Grigg and Mr M'Millan supposed. It would not have conferred the great benefits upon the lower settlers that those gentlemen and others supposed it would, and it is surprising that two gentlemen like them— membera of the Council, and settlers in the County from the very first mooting of the idea of waterraces for the Plains, reader*, too, I take it, of the Christchurch and the local papers, and therefore supposed to be well posted | up in the business of the Council and the work it has done, and proposed to do — should have found themselves on polling day with only a half-knowledge of what yras intended m the scheme. 0 THB.BCHEMS! IT6EU was a modest affair after all, and only contemplated the idea of irrigation at a great distance. It proposed to lap the Eakaia river,. and. from that source supply the, large district below the railway Hnec

of the races now existing in that tract o£ country carry no water in the season of the year when water is most wanted. Large portions of ttie district have no races at all, and for the last twelve months the Council has been besieged with applications for the benefits of the existing system. The Council was powerlesß to help the sufferers, and the Engineer was always firm in telling them that the existing sources of supply could bear no further demands upon them in the shape of increased mileage of races. Yet ' those settlers were equally entitled with the xno3t favoured to have » water supply. When the great scheme of water supply was inaugurated by the County Council, that baa had such a blissful influence upon the whole County, and lies made the conditions of life on the Plains not only tolerable but happy, whereas before they were toilsome and miserable, the cost was ; borne by funds that were a3 much the property of one part of the County a3 of another. . The system 'was intended to supply water in the County where water t was wanted, bab it did not con- | template irrigating for agriculture. i The intention oc the system has not i been fal filled, for the supply taken from i the Ashburton river is insufficient to keep i existing races flowing, far less to accom- | rnodate with fresh ones settlers who are I clamouring for them. There are several i factors in bringing about this insufficiency. ' The porous nature o£ the soil over which 1 the water flow 3, admits of loss by percola- '■ tion j evaporation in the hot weather dis- • poses of a proportion of the 6upply ; negli- ! gence, on the part of landowners above the line, allows another proportion to go to waste; and so on. No civil engineer uuder the sun possesses a mind equal to the task of calculating things like these to a nicety, and when Mr Baxter began the work of laying down this scheme be made what he thought was the very fullest allowance for all expected requirements. But since then the Council have at various times granted loop lines here and there all over the district, bo that immensely greater demands are now made upon the supply than was ever contemplated at the opening. Nobody seems happy unless the race on his property runs through all hiß paddocks and past his kitchen door, and to bring about this idea of happiness, mSnj settlers have importuned the Council until they got what they wanted. Bub every extra chain of ground the water covered weakened the volume of water available for the lower settlers* races, so that many of them " petered out " altogether. The new scheme of tapping the Uakaia was intended firat of all — in fact its main object — to snpply the settlers below the line with sufficient water to keep their races flowing and to enable the Engineer to increase the mileage of races in somethinglike keeping with otber'parts of the country where water was more easily obtainable. This was its first idea, but it had a second one — one that was anything but wanting in importance. It purposed making the headworks, where the river was tapped, sufficiently large to take in a supply of water copiouß enough to supply an irrigation scheme for agricultural purposes should such a scheme ever be resolved upon. But it did not by any means contemplate providing the more costly means of distribution necessary for that object. True, the abundance of the supply thus obtained would have been such that all the existing races would have been kept full, private races supplied, and many new ones, constructed and kept flowing, with enough and to spare to water in a sort of way the farmers' bits of cabbage gardens and orchards ; but as an irrigation scheme, such as has been, times out of number, advocated in these columns sat largely petitioned for from the drier districts of the County, it could not for a moment be looked upon. All this, I am sure, has been made plain enough, long ago. The nature of the Bcheme was fully explained when first it was propounded, and in urging it Mr Coster did not hesitate to put before the Council, earnestly and at length, that it was a scheme that ought to be carried out IN COMHOST JUSTICE TO THE LOWEB SETTLERS. They, poor fellows, have to pull along with an insufficient supply, while the upper settlers have abundance for use and for waste — especially waste, I fear, in too many cases — and yet the existing and unequal system waa laid down out of the common fund. THE VILLAGE BETTLEBS. To the poor men who have accepted the Government offer of land for village settlement purposes, the failure of the poll for a loan to execute the new work will be a crushing blow. Many of them have long distances to carry the water they use for domestic purposes. : They are men to whom the village settlement movement has been a great blessing, and they have brought into cultivation tracts of country that would, but for their occupation, have been unproductive, and continued to be useful only for supplying a niggard bite of grass to the mobs of sheep that travel by road between pastures, or between pastures and markets. The sheep paid nothing for this bite, and the land that supplied it now yields a little return to the Government and the best part of a living to a goodly number of families. Those families, as I have said, are poor, and the cost of water carts is an item they cannot afford, so that the old system of carrying their buckets to their nearest race, a long distance off, will have to be continued until some other means is found for giving them relief. lam gldd to say that the Council looks like facing this question, and that it will be again considered, with Mr Brown, of Wakanui, and Mr E. G. Wright fox its champions. A NEW SCHEME. Mr W. L. Allan, Manager of the Acton Station, is a gentleman who moves about with his eyea open. He has turned his gaze upon the Itakaia river many times in the course of his peregrinations; and now that the poll has failed, and the means to execute the Council's proposed work are not available, he has suggested to Mr Coster a fresh place for tapping the river. Prom this point an auxiliary and not very expensive supply, he thinke, could be obtained that would to a great extent relieve the existing difficulty and help the Engineer to supply the many wants of the district. Mr Coster made the suggestion of Mr Allan to the Council, and as a result the Engineer has been asked to inspect the point of tapping j hinted at by Mr Allan. Let us hope the j result of his inspection will be an increased j supply, for as things : Btand at present, to j quote the Engineer's own words, " One j mile of new races now will disorganise ten i miles of those already existing." " IBEIGATION." It is this word that has caused all the trouble. The Act compels its uee when asking for a loan of the kind the County wanted. The dictionary meaning of the term is "to wet or moisten," "to cause water to flow upon." The sending of water down the made channels, for drink to man and boast, is irrigation, as well as dispersing it over the soil, so that the loan would have been a perfectly legitimate one; hub when people who, having already plenty of water, chose to ignore the wants of others and their just claim to the same water privileges aa themselves— privileges .they have been enjoying for years, while the others have been deprived of them altogether, or in the dry Beason, when they were most wanted — it was a convenient refuge to xead the word "irrigation " as something more than they were then enjoying, and so save themselves theslight extrarate they "would have to pay by ranking with the opposition to the scheme, on the plea that the benefits to be conferred on the lower settlers were greater than those enjoyed elsewhere, and therefore unjust. Yet the benefits enjoyed by the Oppositionists above the line were conferred by the County Council out; of funds that were common to all the ratepayers within the County boundaries. The crony who etuci like a burr to your side, Aud vowed with bis heart's dearest blQod to befriend ye, ■ ' '•* A flve-goinea note, man, mil part ye as wide As if oceans and detfor fes were lying' between ye.