DESOLATE SCENE AT OIL TANKS

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 9, 6 October 1941, Page 10

DESOLATE SCENE AT OIL TANKS

The fresh which occurred in the Kalwarra Stream on Thursday, flooding the houses near the stream and putting the Hutt Road under water, was the highest in living memory. Mr. W. H. Holmes, who has lived there all his life, says that in the 74 years that he can remember he cannot recollect the stream being as high, not even in 1895 when the road and railway bridges were washed away. He had previously known the water of the stream to sweep across the flat where the Atlantic Union petrol tanks stand, however. He attributes the disaster that has happened to the narrowing of the course of the stream by the tipping of spoil from road and railway works into the gorge and the building of walls to coniine the stream. Many people visited the lower part of the Kaiwarra Gorge yesterday to see what the flood had done. The property of the oil company is a scene of desolation. Little is left of the old dam, and the stream now flows straight through its centre. Below the dam the bed of the stream has been filled with debris so that its bed is many feet higher than before the rain, and is actually higher than the oil company’s land, which also is covered with boulders and silt. Some of this debris has probably come from the dam. It was built in the 60's to supply a waterwheel at a flourmill alongside the stream and consisted of a brick wail with a timber facing which allowed water to flow over the top during freshes without scouting the foot of the wall'. It. had silted up, but now that the brick wall has burst most of the silt has disappeared and the water flows in a deep sandy channel where the pond used to be. The flourmill closed when the construction of the Karori Reservoir reduced its water supply, and one night the building was burnt down. The dam was used as a source of water for the tannery that used to occupy the site of the* oil stores, and till Thursday water was drawn from it for Newton and Sons’ soapworks on the Hutt Road. ■