IRRIGATION OF PLAINS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 149, 19 March 1936, Page 16

IRRIGATION OF PLAINS

Ashburton County Scheme 25,000 ACRES OF LAND Work was started on Tuesday on a scheme for irrigating 25,000 acres in the Ashburton county. On Monday morning a gang of 20 men' began excavations near Winchmore, and from tune to time this number will be augmented until an average of 130 men will be employed. The work is being done by the Public Works Department at a cost of about £130,000, and it is estimated that it will be three years before it is finished. The preliminary work of making the soil moisture survey of the county was done by Mr. T. G. Beck, who is engineer in charge of irrigation works in Canterbury and Marlborough, under the control of Mr. F. Langbein, district engineer at Christchurch of the Public Works Department. The direct control of the Ashburton county undertaking is with Mr. J. Riddell. According -to Mr. Beck’s observations, only about one-quarter of the plains area of the county has the desirable amount of .moisture during average years, and about -100,000 acres is deficient every year. The area of 25,000 acres that will be served when the scheme has been completed extends from Ashburton to Lauriston, thence nearly to Lyndhurst, and from there to the junction of the Taylor and Bowyer streams, where they run into, the South Ashburton river. At this point the intake from which the area will be served will be constructed and later the flow from these sources will be augmented by water from Lake Heron. Lake Heron, in turn, will be augmented by the diversion of the Cameron River, so there will be no lack of water.

The first irrigation scheme to be undertaken in Canterbury was that at Recicliff, about 15 miles upstream from Glenavy on tbe north bank of tbe AV aitaki River. This is nearly finished. Its scope is much smaller than the Ashburton county scheme, for it has been planned to serve only a little more than 5000 acres near Redcliffi and Tawai. The cost is about £23,000, and for the last year and a quarter 100 men on an average have been given employment. This scheme is also under the control of the Public Works Department. So far advanced was the work on this scheme, that had it not been for heavy rain during last month it would probably have been possible to serve a considerable area. Even so, water has been used between rainstorms to irrigate property owned by Mr. G. Ruddenklau.

The intake gate that has been constructed is the first of its kind in New Zealand, and has been specially designed to withstand the floods of the Waitaki River. The irrigation intake and irrigation race will supplant the old stock water intake and race for a bout four miles from the river, so that in future there will be no loss of supply in the stock water races through shoaling of the intake, a trouble that has occurred at inconvenient times previously. Wherever it is possible, the department proposes to construct these dual-purpose intakes. In another two months tbe whole undertaking will be completed; but it is not anticipated that the first regular use of the water will be made available until the beginning of next year.