Whanganui letters: Why wasn't council first to the bores?

A company wants to use Whanganui's former milk bottling plant in Anzac Pde to bottle bore water to sell. Photo / Bevan Conley

Whanganui Chronicle readers share their opinions on the news and issues of the day:

Re the recent application by Aquifer 182 Holdings for access to the three bores at the old Whanganui milk plant in Anzac Pde (News, February 23).

One has to ask what are Horizons thinking of? Additionally, what is the [Whanganui District] council's actual thinking on this proposal?

Surely the council should have been quick off the mark and made an application themselves to access this obviously very saleable water, from several hundred metres below the ground and provide the existing city requirements with their own much better water services, compared to the heavily lime-ridden water presently available for the city.

Whanganui Chronicle, February 23.

Citizens of the city come first in access to excellent water supply before companies, who obtain the water, then sell it back to the population.

The local iwi are to be commended for their concern in this matter. [Abridged]

CLIVE E RIVERS
Whanganui

Street drags

I see the annual Whanganui Street Drags are set to take place again this weekend.

I live in Castlecliff where [informal] street drags are a daily and nightly event with Seafront Rd, Manuka St and (more recently) Mill Rd being the favourite tracks. Recently upgraded Mill Rd is now carpeted in tyre rubber from the dragsters' fun.

Trail bikes also assail the suburb and the beach and foreshore.

Despite longstanding and strident complaints from affected residents, the council has done nothing material to control the continuous and widespread illegal activity, and worse, has expended considerable time and energy to prevent residents' initiatives to counter the mayhem.

The extent and frequency of loud speeding vehicles is also clearly beyond the capability or interest of the police to impose some semblance of law and order.

Yet the council sees fit each year to close a main arterial road and to actively promote street drags. This is quite clearly an action that encourages and enables the continuation of the dangerous and anti-social madness afflicting Castlecliff and other parts of the city Can't anyone of authority in city hall see the connection?

JOCK LEE
Castlecliff

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