WHAKAMARU DAM

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27074, 24 June 1953, Page 5

WHAKAMARU DAM

EARTH BEING USED IN CONSTRUCTION NEW HYDRO WORKS ON WAIKATO RIVER (New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, June 23. The construction of an earth Wing on the eastern side of the Whakamaru hydro-electric dam, on the Waikato river, has begun. The wing will be between 300 and 400 ft long, 50ft high, and up to 50ft wide at the base. A much larger counterpart will be built later on the western side. Half a dozen tractor-drawn scoops are shifting earth at the rate of 2000 cubic yards a day. Fine pumice silt is being used for the core of the wing. On either side will go shoulders of sand and gravel brought from a pit about a mile upstream from the dam site. By the time the task is completed, in about six weeks, some 100,000 cubic yards of material will have gone into the wing. Work, is continuing 24 hours a day. A rubber-tyred compactor is being used to consolidate the soil. Later, when tamping is necessary close to the central concrete part of the dam, the Ministry .of Works will produce its “jumping frogs,” novel Englishmade machines which hop up and down to compact the earth. Whakamaru is the first hydroelectric dam in the North Island to be built partly of earth to economise in the use of concrete.