DRAINAGE BOARD WORKS.

Evening Star, Issue 13099, 4 November 1908, Page 3

DRAINAGE BOARD WORKS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I notice that the Drainage Board intend to obtain a new cast-iron 3ft 6in rising main. Mr Small (chairman of the Works Committee) says they can ill afford the expenditure, but it was forced on them, as property and life were their first considerations. The present Board were not responsible. It was a legacy left to them by the old Board, and had turned out a failure, though it cost £5,000, and had only been in use some three years, and nearly all the time required repairing, which, no doubt, cost a lot of money. Yet with the full knowledge of its failure the Beard seem to go on with another new rising main, the cost of which Mr Small does not care to estimate, but’it may run into anything between £7,000 and £9,000, and ill the course of a very few years it will be in a worse condition than the present one to be discarded. It is a well-known fact amongst men who have experience in sewage works that iron continually subjected to uric acid corrodes and very soon becomes useless to resist pressure. I may say at once the pumping station is in the wrong place. As a matter of fact, the late Mr John White called public attention to that fact through the Press before even a shilling was spent on it. All the engineers recognise now that the pumping station should have been at the north-west corner of Tahuna Park, where the rising main ends and where the gravitation sewer begins. A capital site can be got for nothing, as the ground is all under the control of the City Council. The only cost to the Drainage Board would be for the extension of the intercepting sewer to the new site in the sandhills. The length of the extension would be under 2,000 ft, and no engineering difficulties to contend with. The cost might be £IO,OOO, with, say, another £2,000 for a new station, another £I,OOO to shift machinery, etc., or a total of £13,000. I don’t think it would cost much more, and it would make a permanent and practically an everlasting job of the work. If the Board would carry that plan out, we would hear no more about the bursting of rising mains, as there would be none to burst. They were a complete mistake from the first, and should never, have been undertaken. Taking everything into consideration, a new station on the above lines would be the cheapest, and without doubt the most permanent. By selling the present station and all the land belonging to it, the money would go a long way to erect the new one. The whole thing could be done without any stoppage of the present pumping, as one pump could be placed in position and driven by electric power, so there need not be any inconvenience whatever until the whole work was complete.—l am, etc., Bush Engineer. October 31.