WHANGAREI HARBOUR.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 122, 25 May 1928, Page 9

WHANGAREI HARBOUR.

DEVELOPMENT SCHEMES.

BOARD'S POLICY ENDORSED EE PORT OF MR. FURKERT RECEIVED. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) WHANGAREI, this day. Mr. F. W. Furkert, engineer-in-chief of the Marine Department, was recently asked by the Harbour Board to investigate the harbour development works and to advise which is the better of the two schemes submitted by the board's engineer. The report was presented today, and Mr. Furkert endorsed the policy so far followed by tlie board, and designed by the engineer, namely, to construct a harbour at Kioreroa, just below the present railway bridge. The board, said Mr. Furkert, had two objects: —(1) To increase the harbour facilities so as to deal with all business offering at present; (2) progressively to improve the harbour so that eventually overseas vessels of large tonnage might be able to berth and take in and discharge cargo. There being freezing works at the Bay of Islands, where deep water already exists, there was little likelihood, said Mr. Furkert, of works being erected in Whangarei for many years, and no industries were likely to be established, the output of which would be taken overseas. Therefore, the making of a deep-sea harbour below the sandstone bar (the alternative scheme disclosed) was not warranted at the present time.

He recommended the continuation of the scheme of cutting through the sandstone bar and making a channel 150 ft wide, with a depth of 16ft at low water, spring tides, and 25ft for berthage, and the erection of a suitable wharf connected with the railways This would [cost about £25,000 less than if a harbour were constructed below the sandstone bar

Pending the completion' of the harbour at Kioreroa, which would occupy two years or more, Mr. Furkert recommended the strengthening of the Onerahi wharf, and the placing* of ~>ne or two big cranes to make possible the bunkering of phosphate ships. The cranes could later be transferred to Kioreroa.