• Preamble

  WHEREAS it is expedient that the Napier Harbour Board (hereinafter referred to as the Board) should have power to sell certain areas of land in order to provide funds to improve and render saleable those areas and to render revenue-producing certain other areas of land: And whereas the earthquake which occurred in Hawke's Bay on the third day of February, nineteen hundred and thirty-one, had the effect of raising the level of the bottom of the Ahuriri Lagoon (being an endowment reserved and set aside for the use, benefit, and endowment of, and vested in, the Board by the Napier Harbour Board Act 1874, as amended by the Napier Harbour Board Amendment and Endowment Improvement Act 1887, which last-mentioned Act is hereinafter referred to as the 1887 Act), thereby reclaiming from the sea large areas of the said lagoon, and confusing the boundaries, both external and internal, thereof: And whereas the description of the Ahuriri Lagoon as set out in Schedule 2 to the 1887 Act excludes certain islands lying within the outside boundaries of the lagoon, called therein Roro-o-kuri, Parapara, Te Ihuotikei, Uruwiri, Poroporo, Tirowhangahe, Tuteranuku, Awa-a-waka, and Matawhero respectively, of which all except Roro-o-kuri (now owned by Europeans) and Te Ihuotikei and Parapara (both now owned by the Napier Borough Council, the Hastings Borough Council, and the Hawke's Bay County Council) are Native land the title to which has never been investigated, ascertained, or determined: And whereas it is expedient in the interests of the Board that the Board should be afforded the facilities and possess the powers by this Act given and conferred in relation to the Ahuriri Lagoon and the islands lying within the outside boundaries thereof as aforesaid:

BE IT THEREFORE ENACTED by the General Assembly of New Zealand in Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—