Harbors in General.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 182, 14 August 1888, Page 2

Harbors in General.

AN OUTSIDE OPINION ON OUR OWN HARBOR. [LYTTELTON TIMES.] The Bill introduced to deal with the New Plymouth harbor more than fulfils our wors expectations. We have in former articles dealt with the unhappy position of the New Plymouth Board, and explained how that position is likely to affect the Colony outside Taranaki. Our readers may remember how the debt now hanging over New Plymouth came to be incurred; how the present Premier took an active part in inducing the people of Taranaki to incur the liability which is now grinding them within near reach of bankruptcy ; how he pooh-poohed the fears of those who foretold that the harbor loan would have to be met in days to come by crushing rates ; how he talked contemptuously of a trifling rate being a bare possibility of a remote future, a rate not amounting to one-tenth of that now levied in the district, and found quite sufficient to keep the Board’s creditors at bay. The New Plymouth Board having now, with the utmost difficulty, paid its half-year’s interest, is brought face to face with the certain inability to pay the sum due for the next half-year. The rates sre as high as the Board can make them, and the harbor dues persistently refuse to swell the returns sufficiently to make both ends meet. It is hardly necessary to point out that this is not the only bad side of the New Plymouth v tale. The harbor, if we can call the roadaA stead by that name without being suspectecM of sarcasm, is among the worst of the wretched and costly failures of the kind ’ which dot the coast of New Zealand at terribly frequent intervals. At Oamaru the harbor mania has run its full career, and fulfilled its appointed task. Oamaru has become a fifth rate port, and has expired in the effort. At Gisborne the process has been arrested half way, and the fate of the undertaking hangs in the Parliamentary balance. Parliament has to choose between ruining the district and ruining the harbor works. At New Plymouth the roadstead has just proved its capacity for mischief by wrecking one of the Union Company's steamer in what was intended and supposed to be the securest corner of its sanctuary of refuge. In order that it may have a chance of repeating this feat a greater or lesser number of times, and so of finding more work for the New Plymouth lawyers, the House is to be asked to pass one of the most far reaching and danSerous of measures. It is at least onen to oubt whether Nature is not now stepping in to settle the New Plymouth harbor trouble in her own decisive way. Men competent to judge say that the silting which has been going on at the breakwater for some time has now reached an extent, which, in a few weeks, will prevent even the seoond-ola'l steamers of the Union Company from reaching the shelter of the harbor works. It is said that by next Christmas no boat of mora than four hundred tons burden will be able to touch at New Plymouth at all. It is but fair to assume that the Union Company's confidence in the development of the New Plymouth trade is not overwhelming, otherwise we should hardly see Mr James Mills taking the chair at a meeting of members of Parliament pledged to oppose the Harbor Bill to the utmost. We hqve before us the speotscle of a dietriot which, after deliberately going into debt in order that it might enter on a commercial wild goose chase, is now threatened with the consequences of its rashness. Wo have the spectacle of a large sum of money thrown into the sea over a Work which has not been a suooeee, and never will be a success. But New Plymouth is not the only pseudo-harbor in the case. A few miles away there is a roadstead at Waitara, where Nature has been a little kinder, and man a little more reckless, than at New Plymouth, Waitara is, if possible, in direr straits than her sister town, and is a worse bargain for the Colony to take, inasmuch as the Waitara Board, while in actual contemplation of bankruptcy, coolly reduced the rents of its endowment estate so as to make things comfortable for its tenants. As for Patea, tha third mock harbor, that little town rejoices in some toy works at the mouth of i’s river, which have been lately damaged. The ocean not being in a very angry frame of mind, did not sweep away the whole structure, as it might easily have done, but merely did some damage to repair which Patea wants to bor-. row money. Of the two remedies proposed by tha Pre, mier's Bill, one is bad on the face of it. Tha other, less pernicious in appearance, turns out, when looked into, to bs even worse than the first. To allow the New Plymouth Board to exhaust in one handful the land revenue given it to enable it some day to repay its debt, is so outrageous as to hardly need argument. The Board is to have power to calom late the capitalised value of four years' rents and payments from its lands, borrow money to that extent and pay interest with the sum thus raised. What is to happen when this sum is spent is not explained. What will come will ba the old choice—bankruptcy or the intervention of the Colony. Then comes the second remedy. The Government is to have power to fix the harbor dues of the three ports. Under this mild proposal lies the following pretty little scheme The rate? of Waitara and Patea are to be raised to such a figure as will effectually drive the trade of their districts elsewhere. Under ordinary — circumstances this trade would not go to New 4 Plymouth, where it would encounter a miser-1 able harbor, and dues only less high than Jit home, but would go along the trunk line to Wellington. This is not to be permitted, hut the railway rates are to be so fixed as to. leave the trade only one outlet, in the shape of New Plymouth. Impudent as this scheme appears on its face, no doubt of its existence is felt in Wellington. Naturally people there are indignant, as they have every right to be. At. a huge cost the trunk railway has been com-, pleted, which taps the West Coast of the North Island. In the absence of decent har. bor accommodation along that coast the 'proi per destiny of its trade is the magnificent harbour [of Port Nicholson. The Premier'! scheme would defraud Wellington of its natural trade and the West Coast railways of their traffic earnings. If for no other reason, it ought to be rejected without the smallest hesitation,