THE WATER SUPPLY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7923, 30 January 1904, Page 4

THE WATER SUPPLY.

The ratepayers of Linwocd must be well satisfied with the City Council's water supply scheme, otherwise more of them would have accepted the Mayor's invitation to discuss it last night. As it was, seventeen were present at the meeting held to afford them an opportunity of discussing tbe proposals, and when it came to taking a vote on the scheme only eleven took the trouble to record their opinions. To our ontind this is evidence of the fact that the. great body of the Linwood ratepayers are satisfied witb tbe scheme. Had it been otherwise it is certain more of them would have taken advantage of tbe opportunity offered them last night to criticise thi* scheme and condemn it. Tbe objections urged against the Council's proposals at last night's meeting were practically similar to those put forward in Christchurch and Sydenham. They amounted chiefly to lhe oft-expressed fear that the Council's water sijpply would affect the private supplies. Nobody is as blind as the person who refuses to _cc, and we are really beginning to fear that there are numbers of people hi Christchurch who must be included in tbis category. Otherwise, after the Mayor's repeated explanations of this phase of the question, we should not be continually met by this objection. For, as we have urged again and again, it is wholly untenable. Tlie aim of tbe Council is not to interfere with private supplies, but to gradually make private supplies unnecessary ; not to take more water from the artesian reservoir, but less ; and -Jot to increase the ratepayers' expenditure, but to reduce it. If its schetm. is approved by the ratepayers it will.be within measurable distance of attaining these ends.