$492,000 approved for Wairau works

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33712, 9 December 1974, Page 18

$492,000 approved for Wairau works

A Marlborough Catchment Board proposal to spend an estimated $492,000 for riyer-training works along 35.5 kilometres (22 miles) of the Wairau River has been approved by the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Council.

The eight-year financial programme, which has received the council’s maximum $3 for $1 subsidy, is subject to final technical details being agreed to by the Director of Water and Soil Conservation (Mr A. W. Gibson). The cost for the first year will be $61,800. Subseouent annual expenditure will be slightly less. The scheme provides for riverbank stabilisation and river-training works on the Wairau River between the Waihopai confluence and the Wye River. The distance is

about 35.5 km. The work will continue the Marlborough Catchment Board’s pattern of schemes already establishc i up to the Waihopai confluence. Although the immediate rate of economic return is lower than normally accepted for such schemes the facility for extr«-* ! - of irrigation water will be greatly improved. Major production benefits will be derived from the development of irrigation in the Wairau Valley, where farming has ali-ady been significantly increased as a result of an earlier river scheme.