✨ Public Works Report
3rd. They have been carried out with an unusually small percentage of accidents, only four fatal cases having occurred during the whole period referred to.
4th. They have been executed, with trifling exceptions, without exceeding your engineer’s estimates, or interfering with the labour required for the ordinary industrial pursuits of the country.
5th. There are no disputed accounts or outstanding claims from contractors, with the exception of balances due on current accounts.
Lastly. The whole of the works have been designed as portions of a general scheme for opening up the waste lands of the province which was laid down by your Provincial Engineer soon after his appointment, and which has been steadily carried out year by year as circumstances permitted. The close correspondence which may be traced between the sums annually spent on the public works and the amounts received from the land sales would seem to bear satisfactory testimony to the soundness of the scheme in a financial point of view.
- The great work of opening up the Canterbury province for settlement may be said virtually to be completed so far as the eastern seaboard is concerned, although for many years a heavy outlay will be required upon the roads before they can be brought into thorough order. But much greater works still remain to be done. The progress of the province demands the introduction of increased facilities of communication and harbor works. Telegraphs and railways must be undertaken at a heavy cost to meet the rapidly increasing requirements of the settlement.
It will tax the utmost skill, both of the engineer and the financier, to make these works self-supporting in so small a community as that of Canterbury, yet it is most desirable that this should be done so as to leave the land fund free for the ordinary works of the province.
In the earnest hope that your administration of the public works may be marked with the success which has attended the efforts of your predecessors in office,
I have the honor to remain, sir,
Your obedient servant,
E. Dobson,
Late Provincial Engineer.
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Canterbury Provincial Gazette 1863, No 15
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
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Report on Progress of Public Works for 1862-1863
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🏗️ Infrastructure & Public Works1 July 1863
Public Works, Roads, Bridges, Drainage, Surveys, Canterbury
- E. Dobson, Late Provincial Engineer