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ant for the future of the open-race system was the cost: £3900 for dam and both concreted and unlined channels, against an estimate of £64,000 for pipes.

Under these favourable circumstances, the system extended at quite remarkable speed. Almost immediately, the council received deputations and petitions from Hinds and Rakaia, one asking for a similar scheme for the south of the county, and the second complaining that what had been done was insufficient. Wakanui farmers wanted permission to draw off water from the Ashburton River. By the middle of the year 60 miles of race had been completed, 30 miles were being constructed and tenders were let for 23 more.

A year after the ceremony at Pudding Hill, a reporter declared, enthusiastically but no doubt prematurely, that irrigation in Ashburton had ‘to a great extent changed for the better the whole face of Nature in a wide district’.^[1] Indeed, the change was only beginning. Soon afterwards (April 1882), large headworks were opened on the South Ashburton, some four miles above Mount Somers township. A few months later, smaller intakes in the Hinds Gorge and on Limestone Creek came into operation. A supplementary race was cut from the North Ashburton to boost the Pudding Hill supply. By then 400 miles of channel were in use, and the total cost was still under £10,000.

Baxter continued to increase the scope of the system throughout the period. The first plans envisaged races three miles apart. But the benefits from having water available on each farm were so great that the council could not resist constant demands for extensions in almost every direction. By the late 1890s few farmers needed to use a water cart, that very necessary vehicle of the previous decade. Race water was often employed for domestic purposes, perhaps not filtered as thoroughly as was desirable. Every settlement, whether of small village sections or of larger farms, called for fuller supplies of water. Baxter declared in 1887 that 5000 acres of small settlement required an addition of 100 miles of race and the enlargement of headworks and mains.

The increasing demands for water necessitated the construction of more intakes; at Winchmore; on Stony Creek, to supply the Mount Somers district; on both banks of Taylor’s Stream; and even on the lower Rakaia. At the beginning of 1887, the engineer reported normal supply had been declining for some years, that water from the Hinds Gorge barely reached Ruapuna, and that at