SEWAGE ON BEACH

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 64, 9 December 1940, Page 9

SEWAGE ON BEACH

Another Complaint From Lyall Bay

A month ago complaint was made by residents of Lyall Buy that the stormwater drain constructed iu connexion with the Centennial Exhibition was being misused. . This big culvert was put through the old Lyall Bay reserve to take the storm-water from the Exhibition buildings and grounds. Since the Exhibition closed premises have been used as a training ground for airmen, who are domiciled in certain sections of the building. What happened recently was that sewage was finding its way into, the sea and on to the beach, right in the middle of Lyali Bay, and there causing a nuisance. The explanation of the trouble was found to be that for a time the pumps which propel sewage into an old sewage culvert which runs east and west through the reserve had failed, and that some of the sewage overflowed into the new storm-water drain. That has now ceased. Now there is another complaint of a similar order from the same Quarter. Another storm-water drain which reaches the waters of Cook Strait in Lyall Bay, opposite thejunction of the Lyall Bay Parade with Queen’s Drive, not infrequently discharges sewage, so causing a nuisance to residents and a menace to the health of the many children who play about the beach in that vicinity. Wellington has always been troubled more or less with this sort of thing, and efforts are always being made to cope with it, but under certain conditions these overflows do occur. They are specially objectionable iu warm, summer weather, and when the tide is out.