Board Explains Plan For Heathcote Cut

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31586, 25 January 1968, Page 12

Board Explains Plan For Heathcote Cut

The loop in the Heathcote River would have to be widened to about 280 feet to do the same work as the proposed cut in the river, the chief engineer of the Christchurch Drainage Board (Mr P. J. McWilliams) said last evening.

Addressing a public meeting of 40 persons called by the Woolston Improvement Association, he said the proposed cut would take nine acres of land, whereas widening the river loop would take about 50 acres. “The cut provides the best measure of relief for the money involved,” he said. In 1963 estimates of the cost of the cut from Connal Street to King Edward Terrace—about 30 chains—had varied between $528,000 and $628,000, depending on whether it was to be flanked by two roads and crossed by one bridge or to be crossed by four bridges.

He said the proposal had been examined by the hydrological research centre at Wallingford, England, and all but approved from an engineering point of view as the solution to flooding. The Woolston Improvement Association opposes the board’s plan if any alternative is available. But some people at the meeting strongly criticised the plan. They doubted its necessity. Nobody, one said, had been forced to move permanently because of flooding in the area or above it. Mr McWilliams said that even with a by-pass the loop section would be necessary to cope with floods. Plans for the cut would prevent the loop from becoming stagnant or smelly. From calculations it was known that the cut would reduce flood levels by 15 inches just above the cut, but 12 inches one mile upstream and by six inches two miles upstream, he said. The cut, if made, would be 120 ft wide at King Edward Terrace and would taper to 110 ft at Connal Street. The board chairman (Mr F. R. Price) said there was no suggestion that anyone forced out of his home by the taking of land for the cut

would suffer financially. He said the scheme was far from approved, but at this stage it appeared to the board to be the best solution, economically and from an engineering point of view, to flooding problems along the river. The board had bought some property in anticipation of going ahead with the scheme and would buy more where hardship might affect owners required to sell for cogent reasons.

It was not financially possible to buy all homes likely to be affected.