SEWERAGE WORKS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22320, 3 May 1947, Page 4

SEWERAGE WORKS

WAIROA SCHEME ESTIMATED AT £73,000 LOAN SANCTION SOUGHT (S.R.) WAIROA, May 3. Preparations are in train for the construction of large-scale sewerage works in Wairoa at an estimated cost of £78,000 and a decision has been reached by the Wairoa Borough Council to make the necessary application to the Loans Board to raise the money. An additional loan of £15,000 is to be sought for the purpose of making drainage connections advances. If permission to raise the loan is granted,, the scheme will be put into operation next summer and it is expected that the whole work will be completed in three or four years. The amount of piping required for the work is over 13 miles, whilst the labour costs have been set down at £32,000 with holding tanks and pumping station estimated to cost £21,000, engineering and extensions to further streets being put down at a cost of £11,500. The need for a sewerage scheme has been long realised by the council and preparations for its introduction commenced 10 years ago, the proposal then being made of a more elaborate nature and the estimate being £150,000. Last year the council received a reply from the Loans Board stating that although the scheme was basically satisfactory from an engineering point of view it was financially unsound as the burden on the ratepayers would be too great. Since then the council has concentrated on submitting a new scheme that would not prove so expensive, but at the same time would permit various portions of the borough receiving a long overdue service. At present Wairoa, with a borough population of 4000, is carrying on under the antiquated privy system, which has been claimed by at least one health officer to be an intolerable and offensive nuisance in the middle of the twentieth century, the night-soil trenching ground being a source of danger to public health. Since 1936 typhoid cases in Wairoa totalled 17, with two deaths, and even allowing for the relatively large proportion of Maoris in the population this is a high incidence for a town still predominantly European, claimed the medical authority.