WATER NEEDS OF OXFORD

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21391, 6 February 1935, Page 10

WATER NEEDS OF OXFORD

♦ SURVEY OF COUNTY TO BE MADE TOPOGRAPHY AND FLOW OF STREAMS DATA FOR FUTURE IRRIGATION SCHEMES

Within little more than a week a camp will be established by the Public Works Department at Oxford where a survey party will undertake a complete topographical and hydrological survey of a very large area of the Oxford County. The data made available from this investigation, which will be the most thorough of its kind ever made in the district, will provide material for the basis of any scheme of irrigation or for any extension of the stock water-race system which might be needed in the future. The survey will be along the lines of the one just completed in the Ashburton County. Mr T. G. Beck, the officer in charge of the surveys which have already been done by the department, has visited Oxford to select a site for the camp and will superintend operations there. He said yesterday that qualified men would make an exhaustive investigation of the topography and water supply of the Oxford area from the hills to the sea. The field survey would take several months to complete and there would be seven men in the party. As well as making a study of water resources in the rivers, of rainfall and other data which it will be necessary to correlate, the investigators would study soil moistures over the area, levels, and the general physical conditions of the county. The opportunity would also be taken to record rates of flow in rivers and streams which would be suitable as sources oi supply. The survey of the. Oxford area will be similai in detail to that which is now being done in the Levels County, where data are being secured about rainfall, river conditions, soil conditions and the topography of the country which has never before been recorded, and which apart from its use in any irrigation scheme will most likely be of considerable value in other directions in the future. In the Levels County local bodies Jhave already been able to use some of these important details.

Details of Work Mr Beck, when speaking at an inspection of the Scafield irrigation farm yesterday, gave some interesting details of his work in Canterbury. The Ashburton County sut - vey has been completed and the survey in Geraldine County nearly completed. There is still a good deal of work to do in the Levels County. This work, Mr Beck explained, mtant the collection of a vast amount of detail, and all this had to be correlated before any definite conclusions could be come to. But after a year or 18 months it might be possible to make available information of some value to farmers in all the districts covered. One of the most important phases of this survey is a study of soil moisture. IV.. r Beck said that foi this work he had enlisted the aid of farmers in the Ashburton and Waimate Counties, who were making frequent recordings of the rainfall, amount of water in the soil and other details. Over a great area of the Canterbury Plains this year there was a very serious deficiency of soil moisture, Mr Beck said, and the investigations being made indicated the areas which might be worth irrigating. The survey was also including a study of moisture evaporation to indicate how much of the rain which fell on the plains was lost to the land in this manner. The depth of ground water in certain areas was also being investigated.