IN BOGGY GROUND

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 64, 9 December 1936, Page 5

IN BOGGY GROUND

Culvert in Basin Reserve

In order to establish order below ground in connection with Wellington’s storm-water drainage, a good deal of disorder has necessarily to be created upon the surface. The vicinity of Kent Terrace. College Street, Clyde Quay, Buckle Street, and the Basin Reserve have had this experience for nearly 10 months now, but it looks as though the disturbance will soon be over. The big holes, with their barricades, which have become a familiar sight at the eastern end of Courtenay, Place, will be filled up this week, and steps are already being taken to pave at least part of the disrupted ground. Those operations will probably be continued right through Kent Terrace to the Basin Reserve, a thoroughfare half of which has reverted to the condition of a dusty, macadamised road. Culvert formation work in the Basin Reserve is proceeding apace. The big pipes have been laid up to a point opposite the southern end of the grandstand, and trench cutting is proceeding opposite the children’s play area. The line of the new culvert does not proceed out through to Rugby .Street by the main entrance. It takes a turn at the south-western corner of the cricket ground and proceeds obliquely across the footpath and garden reserve to a point almost opposite Adelaide Road, when it turns south into that thoroughfare. In order to get a good working curve for the laying of the pipes it has been found necessary to take a strip of land from the southwestern corner of the playing area, an encroachment, about ten feet deep on the corner, and tapering to nothing on either side. Men were engaged shifting the picket, fence to the new alignment yesterday. This makes no appreciable difference to the ground as' a playing area.

The going beneath ground has not been of the easiest lately. It was thought that as the summer advanced the men would be working in dry ground, but. as a matter of fact, the farther south they proceeded the more waterlogged the ground became, until it is now half water and half sticky pug. From the present outlook, and with the holidays intervening, it is likely to be well on in February before the gang is clear of the Basin Reserve.