EDITORIALS.
It is just as well that two or three salient points should be carefully borne in mind by the public with regard to the Wainui waterworks. Evidently it will take the full force of public indignation and alarm to galvanise the City Council into effective action, and it is desirable that the public should be perfectly clear how the affair stands.
Dismissing for the present the relatively minor matter of the leakages in the race, and deferring also the question whether the concrete race and well were not in themselves, as implied by Mr Marchant, a grave error in design, we have before us two very prominent points which demand most careful attention.
First, we learn that the yield of the stream has been enormously exaggerated, and is in reality very moderate in quantity, not more than will be required in a few years for the ordinary supply alone, without having any left to supply motive power to water-engines or to be recklessly wasted. That is one hard fact which we cannot get into our heads too firmly and clearly, lest we should again be bamboozled by preposterously exaggerated reports of the vastness and inexhaustibility of the Wainui supply.
The other point to be clearly apprehended and persistently kept in view is the condition of the sludge channel valve, through which nearly three quarters of a million gallons is leaking away daily. We have insisted that this state of things argues gross neglect somewhere, because the existence of so vast a leakage must have been known for months past, and was easily remediable had timely action been taken.
As it is, nothing can be done without emptying the reservoir, because there is 27 ft of water pressing on the back of the valve, and the front is inaccessible owing to the foul air in the tunnel, so this frightful waste of nearly five million gallons weekly must be allowed to continue until the setting in of the winter rains shall make it safe to empty the reservoir.
We say plainly that scandalous negligence was displayed in not attempting to stop this huge waste in good time, and the ratepayers have a right to call their representatives in the City Council to strict account on the subject. We have heard it said that it is unfair to blame the Council for the neglect which has been exhibited, but that we should direct our censure against the municipal officer or officers directly accountable for the state of affairs.
This implies a total misconception of the position. It is to the Council that the ratepayers are entitled to look for a full explanation; it is the Council that is wholly and exclusively responsible to the ratepayers. The municipal officers are accountable to the Council and not to the general public. If the officers are negligent, it is the Council that is responsible for not seeing that they do their work properly, or else dismissing them.
In this case we neither assert nor imply that the blame rests with the City Engineer. He may have brought the matter under the notice of the Council over and over again and have been refused permission or means to carry out the needful remedies. The public, at all events, know nothing to the contrary. The extraordinarily eager and injudicious partisanship exhibited by certain Councillors suggests very strongly the suspicion that they are self-conscious of some culpability in the matter.
But whether this be so or not, the Councillors are responsible to the ratepayers, and it is to the Councillors that the ratepayers have a right to look alike for an explanation of the past negligence and for greater care of the citizens’ interests in the future. We regret to say that the attitude at present assumed by several Councillors promises very ill for such improvement. At last Friday’s meeting an extraordinary failure to grasp the full gravity of the situation was manifested.
If Councillors McKenzie and Danks really think the affair is “only a tempest in a teapot,” and a mere “little hitch,” they simply show their utter unfitness to be entrusted with such important responsibilities. It is an insult to the common sense of the ratepayers to tell them that the failure of the water supply during the disastrous fire of Sunday week, and the extreme inconvenience, and even suffering, to which a large part of the city has been subjected for a long time past, owing to the total absence of water at the higher levels for days together, constitute merely a “little hitch,” or to inform them contemptuously that their just and much-called-for protests against this state of things are “a tempest in a teapot.”
We can only say that if the ratepayers do not resent this addition of insult to injury, this offensive sneering at the discomfort, danger, and loss inflicted on the citizens through the carelessness of their representatives, they will show themselves very poor-spirited indeed. We hope, however, that they will make it clear to those sapient Councillors that such conduct is by no means a passport to popular favour or to re-election.
Councillor Quick was distressed at the misconception displayed by the newspapers as to the “functions the Committee were expected to perform.” It may relieve his mind if we assure him that we, at any rate, neither expect nor desire the Committee to perform any functions at all. We regard the Committee as an utterly incompetent body to deal with such a matter, and hold that any report they may make will not be worth a rush.
Councillors Benzoni and Smith might well express their inability to see what use the Committee would be. We quite agree with them there. It will puzzle anybody to explain that.
What is needed is—First, an exhaustive engineering examination of the entire system of waterworks, and then resolute and unflinching action on the part of the Council upon the resultant report, whatever its purport may be.
