BAD DRAINAGE

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 46, 23 August 1927, Page 10

BAD DRAINAGE

MIRAMAR'S TROUBLES

TWO DIFFICULTIES

FRIDAY'S FLOOD

When the City Council agreed to take in the old Miramar Borough as part of the city, councillors realised well enough that Miramar was scarcely a finished suburb; on the contrary, that Miramar was very much in' the-rough, particularly as regarded roads, ■ footpaths, and drainage, both underground and surface. Miramar at that time was mostly open space, and half-formed roads, quarter-formed footpaths—or none at all —open and inadequate drains did not matter so much. Miramar has during the last five or six years, however, simply rushed ahead in its development and is still carrying right ahead, with the result that serious difficulties have to ,be faced, and faced, moreover, in the very

near future.. x The provision of roads and footpaths where half roads and no footpaths are to-day is merely a matter of money, and actually a great deal has already been done to better conditions in some streets; but there are physical difficulties as well as financial difficulties in the way of an improved system of drainage, which improvement must embrace both surface and underground services. Given sufficient! finance, the physical difficulties can bo overcome, but this looks like an expensive job. Anyone who is curious about Miramar's troubles is advised to wait for a really wet day—last Friday was really ideal —and go out in a pair of waders (rubber knee-boots may or may not suffice) to any one of several streets which Miramar people will name —Devonshire road in particular. DEVONSHIRE ROAD.

This road, running roughly east and ■west, • cuts clear across the flatl- from side to side, and is being rapidly built out, the cutting up of the Government land on its southern side having led to a great deal of. building during the last few months. For the greater part of its length it is almost dead level, certainly with too slight a fall to carry off big - quantities of water, as after Friday's downpour, rapidly enough. On top of that, the large drain into which the side channels are supposed to discharge' storm-water cannot discharge sufficiently rapidly into the main drain because the main drain itself has too slight a-fall to take off a big quantity of' water quickly. On Friday this

street and a part of Axley avenue were ■- in'part length flooded from side to side, and houses could be reached only by meanj of "duck boards," which in turn could only- be reached by splashing along the crown of the roadway, which iv' Axley avenue was as much as four 1 inches under water. A quantity of ■ building timber floated most interestingly about one length of- Devonshire road. Other streets were also bad, but Devonshire road people hold that they were the worst off. They want something done right away, and no doubt something will be done, but at best it can be a patchwprk job, for it appears quite certain that the troubles of particular streets cannot be remedied until a general scheme is embarked upon.

' INSUFFICIENT PALL. No other suburb of "Wellington • has open drains similar to those of Miramar, for which the rest of Wellington should be thankful, for they are out of date.and bad from every point of view, but wfien the land was first opened up they, were the obvions means of draining, a^ big area, much of which was then

very swampy. On an average the fall in the open main drains is something like one foot in 800, which means that • the flow is very casual. It is not possible to improve the fall by dropping '■ the-, outlet, near the Miramar Wharf, as it would then be below high water mark, and heavy rain falling at spring tide would mean more banking up. , The Devonshire road people hold that . at any rate if .the outlet were lowered the water would gei away more quick- - ly when the tide was not high, but the . council is "not likely to agree to a mere

half job. .The sluggish flow in the main drains results in the banking up of flood waters in the secondary open drains, into which street side channels ■discharge, some of these secondary open drains having so slight a fall as 1 in 1000.

SEWERAGE TROUBLES. About the time whe* side channels have failed to take away the water, secondary open drains have banked up ..and overflowed on adjoining, sections and-the main drains are full to the' brim with slowly moving water, another trouble shows up, and a very un-pleasant-trouble, at that. The underground drainage system is also inadequate in thai'the pumps, in,/the district station, Broadway, are no-longer powerful enough to handle sewerage plus stormwater which, will find its' way into sumps which lead down"" to the sewers, and the ejector .pumps cannot handle the job, with the result that the ejector chambers overflow and sewage finds its way into the surface drains. This has long been a source of complaint among Miramar residents, but it has been largely remedied by the culverting of the main drain in Hobart street, while another ' length in Park road is at present in hand. The secondary drain's, however, are still open. This morning, although the flood had subsided, a considerable amount of sewage was still passing down the open drains, the perfume from which could not rightly be described as a perfume at all. No one could argue that such a state of affairs makes for better health. ' ' •

BEMEDD3S AND PAYMENT. How are these difficulties to he remedied! It appears pretty • certain that patchwork will not meet the case, for patchwork may bring about complications which will call, for a much greater expenditure in the long run than if the job were tackled as a whole. 1 It is not much use giving a street channel a good fall if it leads into a secondary drain which banks up, and the secondary drain cannot be speeded "up until the main drain is at : tended to. There are two possibilities, one to so widen out the floor of the main drains that the secondary drains may discharge into them without banking up, and the other, to go in for a pumping system over the whole .of', the flat. Either system Will be costly. The difficulty-in-regard to the overflow of sewage will be overcome, at,any rate to a considerable , extent, when more power is available for pumping sewage,.either from a new set of pumps at Miramar or. by a linking up with the new. pumps to be installed in tfte city. This will be a costly work, but it must be done; it does not seemingly present such difficulties as the .handling

of surface drainage. . . ..Having decided in what manner the problem of surface drainage; shall; be tackled upon a scale adequate, to the requirements of Miramar ten or twenty years ahead, j the council must next decide where the. money is to come from. Estimates of the likely cost have : varied remarkably, Mr. E. A. Wright, when Mayor, having spoken of £90,000 and j£ 100,000. No such ambitious figure is shown on the schedule of proposed loan works—the £290,800' loan now to go before ratepayers—but provision is made under several head-

ings as follows: Main stormwater drainage, £5000; sewers,' £17,280; water mains, £12,400. It is quite a tidy sum in total (25 per cent, is to be added for contingencies, etc.) out of the proposed total expenditure for all parts of the city of £164,235 on waterworks and drainage. So far all well and good, but there is no guarantee that the city as a whole will agree to the expenditure of £40,000 for water and drainage for Miramar, and it may be found that a really comprehensive scheme canuot be undertaken for this sum. The work must be done sooner or later, and «s Miramar is- developing every day the problem is becoming more and more urgent. If the loan proposal should not meet with the approval of the ratepayers of the city, some other way must be found out; possibly the necessary authority might be given to the council to raise the money, without recourse to a poll of ratepayers, by the Board of Public Health, as was dono in the case of the water supply for Seatoun Heights.