II72 



River Ouse Drainage Scheme. [mar., 



them, they are doing their best, by a reasonable and regular 

 system of winter washing, grease banding, spraying, pruning 

 and rubbish destruction, to keep their orchards clean and free 

 from pests. What is needed in the interests of fruit growing is 

 that the methods and practice of the best and most far-sighted 

 growers should be better known and more generally imitated. 

 ****** 



Certain statements recently published in the Press disclose 

 considerable misunderstanding with regard to the object and 

 effect of an Order made recently by the 



^tL^i^vef Ouse^ Ministry for the purpose of estabhshing 



DrainagrLhrme. ^ drainage authority to contiol 



the whole of the main channels and banks 

 of the River Ouse and its tributaries. 



It has been alleged that if the Order becomes effective the 

 Ouse Drainage Board will embark forthwith on a scheme for 

 putting the river into order at a cost of not less than £3,000,000. 

 Such a statement is, of course, entirely misleading and incorrect. 

 In the first place, the highest estimate yet put forward as the 

 possible total cost of putting the whole river into proper order 

 (and this was a figure put forward by the opponents of the 

 Order at the public inquiry) was not £3,000,000 but £2,000,000.* 

 In the second place, even assuming that such a figure repre- 

 sented the probable cost of putting the rivers into order, it is 

 obvious that the work would necessarily be extended over a 

 great number of years, andth at nothing approaching such a 

 sum would ever be raised at once. The Ouse Drainage Board, 

 when established, will be a body elected by the ratepayers of 

 the district, and it is inconceivable that a body of that nature 

 would embark upon any such fantastic career of extravagance 

 as is suggested by the persons who have made the statements 

 referred to above. 



Calculations have also been put forward, and results have 

 been published in letters to the Press, of the amount of the rate 

 per acre which may be expected to be imposed on agricultural 

 land in the upper valley of the Ouse by the Ouse Drainage 

 Board. Those calculations were not only made on false assump- 

 tion that the Drainage Board will raise a sum of £3,000,000 by 

 a single loan, but they appear to have been based on the original 

 draft of the Ouse Drainage Order. The rating schedule con- 

 tained in that draft was revised drastically in favour of the 

 upper parts of the valley before the Order was sealed by the 



* The Ministry has recently been infonned that the figure ;^3, 000,000, 

 which appeared in a letter to The Times, was a mistake, and that the writer 

 of the letter intended to write ;^2,ooo,ooo. 



