CORRESPONDENCE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 14 February 1927, Page 5

CORRESPONDENCE.

AN EXPLANATION. (To the Editor Daily Advertiser). Sir, —May I use the medium of your columns for an explanation regarding the hole on my property called by the Mayor, “The place where the mosquitoes are bred.” I would point ou!t that ten months ago at the time of the purchase of the property, this hollow, once apparently a gravel pit, which has since been partially filled up, was dry, and I was assured, had been dry for three years. During Health Week I offered it to the Borough Council as a rubbish dump, but owing to con tinuous heavy rains carts could not go on the ground. The Borough Council has lately used it as an ash dump. Given good weather the hole would have been filled up by now. This hole was lately brought Under the notice of the Health Department M r eUington, by Mr Wallace. Following notification from the Department, an examination of the place revealed that drains from Mr Wallace’s place, and from an adjoining property, were leading into the hole. Since they have been notified to fill these in, the water has already gone down twenty-four inches. Oil. and ashes have been used to prevent mosquitoes breeding. This hole is now probably the freest from mosquitoes in Waimate. Why calumny should be heaped u]>on this hole, with water dimensions of about six by twenty-live yards, and it, made to bear the blame for Waimate’s mosquitoes, is difficult to ascertain. It merely remains to point out that when the Health Officer was asked , concerning larger adjacent holes, only one of which is approximately eighty by eighteen yards, he is re- ' ported to have said that he was deni ' ing only with this one. In a few days the forty-year-old hole on my property will have ceased to exist —I am. etc., G. J. SHACKLETON.