(5)
19. The length of the proposed sea-wall will be 3,400 yards or nearly 2 miles. Of this length the frontagers will have to pay for 2,800 yards and the Government 600 yards. These 600 yards represent the frontage of the Crown lots tinted yellow. I am informed that if the Government would not care to go to the expense of em- banking the 600 yards the Lot-owners themselves would be glad to relieve the Colonial Treasury of this charge on condition of their keeping the land reclaimed. Such a relinquishment of its own rights, however on the part of the Government, would be equivalent to making the frontagers a present of no less a sum than one and a half million dollars.
20. Mr. CHATER who has gone very minutely into the matter calculates the cost of the sea-wall, including sewer extensions and all contingent masonry-work at $300 per yard lineal of sea-frontage. My own opinion is that the cost will be more like $360 per yard lineal, and at this higher figure, I estimate the 600 yards of wall would cost the Government $216,000. From this I deduct $50,000 for the stone available from the present old wall, reducing the Government outlay on masonry works to about $166,000.
21. With regard to the cost of filling in behind the 600 yards of wall for the formation of the five sites shewn tinted yellow on the map, and which comprise an aggregate area of 300,000 square feet I am of opinion that it will not exceed $179,000, or say in round numbers $180,000 making a total Government outlay on works of $346,000.
22. A light railway may be laid along the Praya from the Sulphur Channel to the Gas-works, at which point the new reclamation begins. The Kennedytown cliffs and steep hillsides fronting the Sulphur Channel may be excavated down and the material (red loam) used for the filling in, the cliff excavations along Sulphur Channel being so conducted and finished off as to leave level building sites for auction sale on the completion of the works. In this way I calculate that an area of 300,000 square feet of hillside may be excavated down and levelled at Kennedy- town and left available for auction sale after the reclamation works are finished. The sale of these additional 300,000 square feet of levelled sites would at $1 a square foot yield the Government another $300,000 in premiums and $7,200 a year in Crown Rent, and to the latter figure may be added subsequently about $10,000 more for rates and taxes on buildings. The total profits to the Colonial Treasury from Kennedytown excavations will be therefore as follows: proceeds from land sales $300,000, and subsequent yearly revenue $17,200. These profits are of course additional to those set forth in paragraph 5.
23. It should be made clear to the promoters of this scheme that although the Government will carry out the works, the cost of administration, of railway, plant and rolling-stock, machinery, and all contingent expenses must be borne by them and the Government respectively in the relative proportions of the areas which it will fall to each to reclaim, and that any stone and old building materials available from the present wall will be retained for itself by the Government and utilized on those sections of the proposed new wall which the Government will build on its own account. This arrangement is only fair, since it was the general rate- payers who paid for the old stone and who are therefore entitled to the benefit of it in the new works.
24. In this Colony extensions to marine lots have always been allowed by reclamation from the sea provided the lot-owner carried out his reclamation in accordance with plans approved by the Government. No premium has ever been charged for such extensions. The Government has always contented itself with the increased Crown Rent corresponding to the area reclaimed. Sir HERCULES ROBINSON and Sir JOHN BOWRING dispensed with money premiums, and deemed it best to satisfy themselves with the yearly Crown Rents. The largest reclamations were made during the administration of these two Governors, and their policy seems to have been adhered to and continued by their successors.
25. But though premium may have been dispensed with in money, it has in reality always been claimed in land as an equivalent of money, and the frontagers. have been permitted to make sea reclamations only on condition of their surrender- ing to Government a portion of these for public use in the shape of roads and
streets.