NAPIER HARBOUR.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20361, 19 July 1934, Page 1

NAPIER HARBOUR.

Proposal to Save Over £53,000 a Year. Per Press Association. NAPIER, July 19. Ratepayers of the Napier Harbbur Board throughout Hawke’s Bay are today engaged in voting upon proposals of the board to raise a loan of £335,000 for the purpose of completing a breakwater harbour and providing six berths for overseas vessels, replacing the expensive and out of date method of lightering which has ruled for the past fifty years. The proposals have the complete approval of the Marine Department, the Public Works Department, the Treasury Loans Board, and a committee of Hastings accountants, which investigated the estimates. The accountants reported that when completed the new harbour would save the producers and the importers of the district over £53,000 a year. No rates are to be struck in connection with the loan and all charges on past loans, the proposed loan and w’orking the harbour are to be met out of ordinary revenue, plus a small charge on inward and outward cargo for six years. As a result of the earthquake, the existing breakwater structure affords greatly increased protection from wave action and the proposals provide for still further protection by extension of the existing mole. A new ferro-concrete wharf to berth the two largest vessels visiting 'the Dominion will be the most modern and the largest in New Zealand, outside Wellington and Auckland. A further two berths are to be provided at a second new wharf for vessels drawing up to 30 feet, and two more berths at the present wharf for boats of lesser draught. Keen interest has been aroused in the poll throughout the district, which extends from beyond Waipukurau in the south nearly to Wairoa in the north. The opposition is headed by Mr A. E. Jull, M.P., who for twentytwo years was chairman of the board. The proposals are supported by the chairman, Mr Trevor M. Geddis, and eleven members of the board, out of a total of fourteen.