1920.] 



Land Drainage. 



on broad lines and organised comprehensive schemes for the 

 improvement of whole rivers and large areas of land. 



The cost of the work done under the Regulations was either 

 met voluntarily by the riparian owners or occupiers themselves 

 in the first instance, or, where the work was carried out by the 

 Executive Committees, was advanced by the ^Ministry, to be 

 recovered from the riparian occupiers on the completion of 

 the work. To . obviate the injustice of compelling a riparian 

 occupier or owner to pay for work which benefited other land 

 besides his own, all such work, if it could not be paid for out 

 of the rates of a drainage authority, was done by prisoner 

 labour, which was given free. The official action of county 

 committees under the Regulations naturally aroused widespread 

 interest in land drainage, and led to a vast amount of voluntary 

 work being done by landowners. A return rendered recently 

 to the Ministry by county committees shows that the acreage 

 which has been benefited by drainage work done by or at the 

 instance of County Executive Committees reaches the sub- 

 stantial total of 405,500 acres in England and Wales. The 

 advances made by the Ministry of Agriculture to pay for the 

 work amounted approximately to £90,000, of which about 

 £20,000 has been recovered. Owing to changes of tenancy 

 and other causes, it may not be possible to recover the whole 

 of the balance, but it is estimated that the ultimate cost to the 

 State of ^ the whole work will not exceed an average of 2s. per 

 acre. 



The return above referred to is a document of great interest, 

 not only as showing the districts in which the greatest energy 

 has been displayed, but as indicating the different nature of the 

 problems with which the count}^ committees had to deal. 

 Eor example, in Norfolk nine schemes were carried out, and the 

 total area benefited was 34,000 acres, an average of 8,500 acres 

 for each scheme.* In Cumberland 10,000 acres were improved, 

 but this involved the carrying out of no less than 99 separate 

 schemes, of which 74 were carried out voluntarily by landowners, 

 at the instance of the county committee, without any advance 

 of money being made by the Ministry. Another typical scheme, 

 of which some account may be of interest, was carried out in 

 East Suffolk on the Dove. The length of river which was 

 taken in hand v/as about 10 miles. The area drained by it 

 is 20,000 acres, and the^ total cost of the work (the prisoner 

 labour being free) was £1,050. The average width of the river 



* An account of the work done in Norfolk on the River Waveney was 

 published in this Journal, July, 1919* P« 381, and December, 1919, p. 922. 



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