TE RORE WATER SUPPLY

Waipa Post, Volume 36, Issue 2146, 19 April 1928, Page 5

TE RORE WATER SUPPLY

THE LEGAL POWERS. CONSTRUCTION OF WORKS. The county solicitors, reporting on the question of the Waipa County Council establishing a water supply for the inhabitants of Te Rore and surrounding districts, advised that The Water Act, 1908, provided that a county council may construct and maintain water races and raise loans and levy rates for the purpose. By the same Act two or more adjacent road boards in a county or which the Counties Act is not in operation or suspended may unite to form a water supply board having similar powers to those of the county council as above mentioned.

Part 2 of the Land Drainage Act, 1908, provides that in districts where the provisions of the Water Supply Act, 1908, cannot conveniently be adopted, the Governor-General may establish districts for the supply of water having powers similar to those of a land drainage board. The definition of " water race " in these statutes is not very clear, but we think it is meant to have its popular meaning as an open water channel primarily intended for the irrigation of the soil. We do not think that these statutes are meant to provide for the construction of works to supply water under pressure for domestic or fire-fighting purposes.

If the Council wishes to establish water works for these latter purposes it must proceed under'section 182 of the Counties Act, 1920, which provides that " the Governor-General may by Order-in-Council. confer on any county council named in the order such of the powers as are conferred on borough councils with respect to the supply of water for domestic or industrial purposes as he thinks fit and with such other restrictions as he thinks fit, and thereupon that any county council shall have and may exercise the said powers accordingly pursuant to the tenor of the Order-in-Council.

Under part 24 of the Municipal Corporations Act the borough council has power to construct water works for the supply of pure water for the use of the .inhabitants of the borough and to keep them in repair and do all the necessary incidental works. The borough council's powers are for the supplK oi e w,ater to all the inhabitants of tiM borough, but presumably the County Council does not desire to supply all the inhabitants of the county. We think, however, that under the powers quoted above the GovernorGeneral could restrict or modify the County Council's powers so as to apply only to a denned area of the plyUnder the Local Bodies Act, 1926, a local authority may raise a special loan for or in connection with the constructing, providing, or establishing of any public work or the engaging in ..any undertaking as to which the local authority is duly authorised by law. If the necessary Order-in-Council was obtained under section 182 of the Counties Act, therefore, the Council would then have power to raise a special loan for the construction of water works and to impose a special rate as security therefor. There is, of course, no power to strike a general rate over the district served by the water supply for the purpose of maintaining the water works and any maintenance charges would have to be made out of the county funds out of a " separate rate " from time to time raised on the petition of ratepayers in the district served by the water supply.