SEWERAGE SYSTEM

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 301, 16 September 1930, Page 3

SEWERAGE SYSTEM

Improvements at Palmerston Dominion Special Service. Palmerston North, September 15. Improvements estimated to cost £lBOO are to be carried out to the city’s septic tanks. The work is an urgent one and the council, at its meeting to-night, decided to provide the money from the general account. The sum will be refunded from the sanitary account within the next two years. The city engineer, Mr. X R. Hughes, said that he, had drawn attention to the matter in his report on the sewerage system in 1920. The consensus of opinion among sanitary authorities was that the tank capacity should be equal to 24 hours’ flow to adopt this to Palmerston city’s requirements, taking 50 gallons as the average daily requirement per capita. The dry weather flow would equal 1,000,000 gallons. The tanks present holding capacity was 299,600 gallons, so that sewerage was thus passing through the tank in about eight hours. He proposed that dividing walls between two of the tanks be demolished, and that the bot-, tom of each compartment be raised _to permit of the sludge and mat -being drawn' off by gravitation to a sludge channel.. ’ Mr. Hughes said also that filter beds be done away with, the boulder bed removed, and the space now occupied be walled in to form two additional tanks with a holding capacity greater than that of the existing tanks., thus increasing the total tankage to 567,200 gallons, and providing for 12 hours’ dry weather flow. While this storage still fell short of 24 hours’ holding capacity, it would result in a very much better degree of purification and of such a nature that it could be passed to the river without, filtration. He estimated that the work would cost £lBOO A good deal of the amount, at least 50 per cent., represented labour costs, and would give employment to at least 15 to 20 men for about three months. -