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Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1064, 22 March 1882, Page 2

We are a very contented community in a matter which is a positive disgrace. Contented helplessly to stand by and see our houses, burned down, prosperity retarded, and even life endangered, for want of sufficient water supply, a provision easily within our reach, and the expence of which need not necessarily be borne altogether by our own generation. We are contented to drink foul water, pumped up from back-yards saturated with sewage and its nameless horrors, or, at best, to induct into our system the objectionable substitute, collected from dusty and mossgrown roofs seething with animal life, fermented in tanks and barrels, tubs and boxes, and impregnated with dangerous metallic substances, the chemical production of galvanic action. As a community we Unwa^fl.^^^Mig9ncies of a ['m6cferi> civilization are to us as nought, cleanliness is an 'unknown quantity. Pent up within an amphitheatre of : densely wooded hills — mostly a birch \ forest, and provocative of " birch fever" and other cutaneous diseases — with a close atmosphere charged with carbonic (exhalations, we have a climate trying even to seasoned adult manhood, and especially so to women and, children, requiring an intelligent attention to^ those well known rules which govern physical health and its attendant mental elasticity. And it becomes a question akin to this, whether or not our apathy, our want of public spirit, be ndt in great measure due to those subtle butdeleterious influences which could bei made to disappear in provision of an abundance of pnre filtered water which need not absolutely require the addition of whiskey to qualify it. In order to; dispose of this .all important question it will necessary to set about obtaining reliable information. Fist of all we want a legal opinion as to; whether the County Council possesses or can acquire, the powers necessary for raising a loan for construction of waterworks, for if so, there need be no immediate division of interests caused by the creation of Reefton into a Borough. Secondly, to. at once take steps to create a Borough in the event of the County Council being unwilling or incompetent to raise the loan, and thirdly, and in either case, to procure competetive plans and estimates of cost of the necessary works. Once placed in proper train there need be little fear but that the necessary^ funds would be forthcoming, provided that the works be of such substantial character as to prove the earnest of the projectors. Unfortunately for us at this juncture we are under the disadvantage of not having a Mayor to grace with civic dignity, and add the impress of a constituted authority to our public meetings, but there is not a shadow of doubt there are earnest and public spirited men amongst us who will take this matter up without further delay, and by calling a public meeting for the purpose, give the subject that free ventilation which its gravity and importance demand.