“GOOD PROGRESS” IN ESTUARY STUDY

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31052, 6 May 1966, Page 19

“GOOD PROGRESS” IN ESTUARY STUDY

Good progress on model studies of the Estuary of the Avon and Heathcote rivers was reported by Mr W. A. Price, a principal officer of the British Hydraulics Research Station at Wallingford, when he arrived in Christchurch on Wednesday. Mr Price has a close association with the Estuary studies, as he is in charge of coastal engineering at the station, but his New Zealand visit, the second, is mainly concerned with studies made by the station for the Tauranga Harbour Board. While he is in New Zealand Mr Price is seeing other projects of the Wallingford station, the Estuary study being the main one. Studies made on a 90ft by 90ft model had indicated that Nature was being reproduced, Mr Price said of the Estuary study. This had been shown after about 18 months, he said. Another nine to 12 months would be needed before the

station could make its final report on the Estuary. Mr Price emphasised that the study had been commissioned by the Drainage Board to determine the effects of a barrage on drainage. A road linking Sumner and New Brighton was a secondary consideration, but a very minor one, because if a barrage was feasible, then a road would not be any problem. Of more general interest, Mr Price said, was the development of the Estuary as an aquatic playground. Wallingford had been told of this as an idea, and it entered into considerations, but only after the main purpose of the study, Christchurch drainage. While he is in Christchurch Mr Price will see Cashin quay and the eastern harbour extensions of the Lyttelton Harbour Board. He was not directly involved in them, but Lyttelton was the first major project undertaken by the station, so anyone from it was interested to see what had happened, he said.