The subject of City Drainage, which attracts so much of the attention of municipal authorities in Britain and other countries, has been very much neglected by the Corporation of Dunedin.
Possibly it will not direct its energies to this important question until some dreadful scourge has, by decimating the population, compelled its attention to the subject.
But without the importation of epidemics from other places, there is too much reason to fear that an epidemic of some sort will be originated here during the approaching summer, unless an efficient system of drainage is immediately applied to some of the low-lying and populous portions of the city, where cesspools and filth are allowed to accumulate, generating the most disagreeable odours, even to passers-by.
Such places are a positive disgrace to any city, and especially to its municipal authorities.
It is exceedingly fortunate that we have hitherto been spared any great public calamity from this source of danger - a circumstance which is due to a great extent no doubt to our temperate and healthy climate.
But there is always a limit to the strain to be put on Nature; and as regards our City drainage, we believe that we have now reached that limit, and that if we press much more upon her, she will, as she always does, re-assert her laws in a most unmistakable manner - in this instance by disseminating disease throughout the community.
Attention to the sanatory condition of the city is one of the first duties of the Corporation, and had it not been that the time of that body has been so much engrossed with schemes for securing the sole right of supplying the citizens with gas and water, steps might have been taken ere this to drain the city.
A great deal of attention, too, has been given by the Corporation to carrying out works that are not required.
For instance, some candidates for municipal honours have recently taken great credit to themselves for having supported a large expenditure upon kerbing the principal streets of the city.
So far from thinking that the Corporation deserves credit for its outlay in this direction, we know that we express the opinion of a large majority of the citizens when we say that a considerable sum of money has been taken out of the ratepayers' pockets, and wantonly wasted.
A new Corporation year is about to commence, and it is to be sincerely hoped that when it is completed, the Councillors will be able to show that they have not dipped unnecessarily into the pockets of the citizens.
Were the Corporation, during the next twelve months, to drop the water and gas questions altogether, and devote its attention chiefly to carrying out a system of drainage for the city, the members of that body would at the expiry of the year, be in a position to tell the ratepayers that their welfare had been carefully studied.
There would be little difficulty, we imagine, in the way of the Corporation obtaining authority from the Assembly to raise an amount which would suffice for the purpose, and no time should be lost in instructing the City members to move in the matter.
If, however, the Corporation determines upon shutting its eyes to the necessity of taking immediate steps to drain the City, we feel satisfied that, sooner or later, all circumstances will compel it to give the subject its serious consideration.
- August, 1