TIRED OF WAITING

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 3, 5 January 1926, Page 6

TIRED OF WAITING

ISLAND BAY RESIOENTS

ANNOYED

BROKEN DP.AIN AND UGLY

SWAMP.

Fully eighteen month! ago, a "Post" reporter was informed to-day, certain residents of Island Bay tailed the attention of the ,city authorities to the development of an ugly and unhealthy swamp area between Clyde street and the Parade- Letter* passed and the local association took the matter up, at length receiving an assurance that the matter would be kept in mind when the estimates for the year 1935-26 werg being prepared. Sure enough, provision wda made for the work, but it has not been done, and is apparently not to be done during this financial year, for at the last meeting of the council an instruction was given that the City Engineer ihoull put in hand the draii." ig of the ■wampy land at Clyde street in March, ta., in the financial year 1926-27. The residents nearby propose to press for the commencement of the work at the very beginning of the new financial year,'leet, they say, the swamp should lie ugly and unhealthy while more months go by, until such time a* the money set aside is again required for "more urgent works." From their point if view it is itself a thoroughly urgent work, in that school children play about the sections affected before and after school—the school being just across the road— and during the last few months there have been too many reports of serious illness among the children of the bay. To just what extent the swamp is to blame for the outbreak cannot be know-, but those who are against the swamp hold that bad drainage is at the bottom of all the trouble. The matter has been brought before the notice of the Mayor personally, as well as before the council in the usual formal manner, but beyond the sprinkling of chloride of lime upon the water and the muddy area, no marked improvement has been brought about. Mosquitoes and sandflies flourish greatly, arid the evening air is not improved in flavour after a full day's sunshine.

Apparently the trouble goes back, or rather down, to an old stormwater drain which, has given up work after ii) any years of service, and has become altogether or partially blocked. After a'heavy rain the mud pool becomes a very sizeable artificial lake, and in a dry spell evaporates or seeps away to mud pool dimensions again. That the water does seep away was impressed upon all of the residents when a patch of his back yard gave way under his feet and disclosed a fair-sized cavity and an underground stream. A depression has appealed a few feet away in bis neighbour's section, and,plumbing work in a building in the second section has threatened to give trouble, apparently owing to a sinking. Where th« underground stream rum to cannot be seen, but it is evident that it does not conveniently ikirt the buildings between the swamp and the Parade; it runs directly under one or more of them, and the owners and occupiers fear that more serious trouble than • eaving-in in a backyard may follow unless something is done very soon.

The association and all residents directly concerned, the reporter was informed, intend to continue bringing the matter before the council until a definite improvement is brought about. They maintain that as the danger of a second outbreak of disease is greater during the hot months of January, February, and March the work should be undertaken at once.