CORRESPONDENCE.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19033, 10 June 1924, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

OBSOLETE (!) CIVIC METHODS. (To the Editor.) 1 Sir, —My attention has been drawn to a report of a meeting (appearing in your Saturday’s issue) of the Wanganui Ratepayers’ Association. At this meeting Mr. A. A. Gower is reported to have used figures, which he must have known were absolutely incorrect. Every figure is wrong, and in two cases ridiculously so. The Borough Council has not bought restar from my company for some time, but when they did they never paid anything approaching ll|d, and this at a time when they were receiving a considerably higher price than the tar is worth now. Further they had the added advantage of drawing their tar hot and ready for the road. Since then the new system of vertical retorts renders tar less valuable owing to the increased heats and different system of carbonization punishing the tar and coke in favour of the gas of which there is a larger yield per ton of coal. Mr. Gower will perhaps be surprised to learn that after treatment of vertical retort tars and the elimination of the wax contents (as high as 15 per cent.), which is useless except for burning, all the oils except the more volatile fraction, go back into the road binder, which he describes as rubbish. It may also be news to Mr. Gower that a special process, involving expensive plant and the uso of a patented course of treatment which my company has acquired at considerable expense, is necessary before vertical tars can be handled successfully at all. These facts are known to gas managers and account for the unanimous decision of every vertical tar plant manager in the North Island to send his tar to our factories —at a less price than Wanganui is receiving. The manager of the Wanganui gas plant, like the others, is quite alive to the opportunities, but he is also familiar with the drawbacks. But a critic like Mr. Gower should get hold of the right facts and figures before he gets into public print. If he did he would find that there is not a fortune in handling vertical retort tar, even by experts, and that local bodies responsible officers know enough to keep out of the business.—l am, etc., J. F. HOLLOWAY, Manager Restar Ltd.