1092 



Land Drainage. 



[FEB., 



temporarily the duties of any drainage authority which is not 

 carrying out those duties satisfactorily, and the second is to 

 carry out schemes for the improvement of small areas of 

 agricultural land by clearing or improving the watercourses. 

 Both these powers are delegated by the Ministry to county 

 committees established for the purpose. Schemes for the im- 

 provement of areas which are not suitable for administration 

 by drainage boards are prepared by the county committees, 

 approved by the Ministry, and deposited in draft for a month 

 for public inspection. After any objections which may be 

 Kiade have been dealt with, the schemes are carried out by the 

 county committees, the cost being advanced by the Ministry 

 of Agriculture, and recovered from the owners of all lands 

 benefited by the work. After the completion of the work, a 

 county committee (acting as the Ministry's delegate) has the 

 powers of a drainage board for the purpose of the maintenance 

 of the works. The drainage of all the small detached areas in 

 any county can thus be maintained by a single authority, 

 instead of being either neglected or maintained by small local 

 drainage boards which are necessarily uneconomical and have 

 tended in the past to become inefficient. Schemes of this 

 nature can be put into operation in places where there are 

 ancient Awards which have fallen into abeyance on account of 

 the vagueness of their terms or for want of any properly con- 

 stituted authority to carry out their provisions. 



The measures referred to above have led to a fairly general 

 appreciation of the great harm which has been done to 

 agriculture in the past by the neglect of the rivers and brooks 

 throughout the country. The damage does not arise only 

 from actual floods, but arises to an even greater extent from 

 the perpetual waterlogging which has rendered a great quantity 

 of land entirely useless for corn-growing or for any of the 

 deep-rooting crops, of which the value is now generally 

 admitted. There is no doubt that much money has been 

 wasted in the past by attempting to drain fields without 

 providing an efiicient outfall, and that the effect of much farm 

 draining which was carried out years ago at great expense has 

 been entirely lost through the outfalls having become choked. 

 There seems now to be some ground for hope that the campaign 

 which has been carried on during the last two years for the 

 clearing of watercourses may result in widespread and 

 permanent benefit to agriculture. 



