PUMPING OF SEWAGE

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 204, 26 May 1938, Page 8

PUMPING OF SEWAGE

New Compressors To Arrive Next Month

REMOVAL OF DESTRUCTOR

An important change is to be made tills year in the nature of the machinery

which supplies the compressed air for tile sewerage system of Wellington. At present the air-compressing plant js driven by steam-driven sets, boused in

a building alongside the destructor and supplied with steirm from boilers large* iy heated bv the destructor furnaces. This plant has served Wellington well and faithfully for the past 40 years, and the machinery mentioned is running as smoothly to-day as it did at first. The change lias become necessary because the heat from the destructor tires will not be available much longer, the city council having decided that the destructor is to be removed. As long ago as 20 years the residents petitioned the council to remove the destruetoi to another site, and the matter was discussed, hut. the step was postponed on the grounds that the removal of the destructor would deprive the city of the beat that wife so essential to drive the sewerage plant, and that to transfer the works to another site would mean very heavy expenditure. However, the growth of Wellington has brought a change. Although 30 years ago the destructor might not have seemed out of place on its present site, the position is now very different, as the city has moved eastward and the corporation yards form oue Hank to the natural approach to the popular promenade and beautiful suburb of Oriental Bay. So the doom of the destructor was pronounced by the city council last year, when it was decided that before the centennial celebrations began it would be removed. The first step was to obtain alternative machinery to the steam plant. This was ordered some months ago, and the city engineer, Mr. K. E. Luke, stated yesterday that the new units were due to arrive next month. At the corporation yards, in a new steel-framed building, the foundations for the new machinery are already being prepared. A hole about 20ft. long, 15ft. wide and 4ft. deep is being excavated for the concrete foundations on which the new units will rest. These units consist of two electrically-driven air compressors. They will do all the work of which the existing steam plant is capable and a considerable margin in excess of that. The erection of the new plant will probably not be completed until toward the end of winter, but: it. should be ready to go into commission in the spring, providing all is in readiness for the change-over. Tile end of the destructor will follow next year. During the change-over period new rubbish tips will have to be found to take the huge quantity of rubbish that is daily consumed by rhe destructor fires, but it is thought time this should not bo difficult in view of the success already made of lipping on the Bradford system. Tito destructor buildings are substantial and wili not be demolished when the chimney comes down.