BIG LOAN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 69, 20 February 1937, Page 6

BIG LOAN.

TIRITEA WATER SUPPLY. , POLL NEXT WEDNESDAY. Ratepayers of Palmerston North on Wednesday next will be called upon to give their sanction to a Joan of £90,000 —the largest waterworks proposal yet placed before thenn—for the construction of a new dam at Tjritea and for improvements to the reticulation. The last major waterworks loan submitted to the ratepayers was in 1905, when they negatived a proposal to spend £56,000 at Tiritea, but later that year approved of the expenditure of £26,000 on the dam which has since served the city, but has proved inadequate for requirements. Last year, loans committing the City Council to an expenditure of £8260 on the artesian bore at Vogel ( Street, and £14,300 011 the laying of a long section of 21-inch supply main to improve the reticulation to the city, were, carried. Work having been suspended on the first artesian bore, another is now being driven 011 the Vogel Street site, and has reached a depth of over 200 feet. Meanwhile, storage facilities there are in readiness, and a feeder pipe has been laid to the main in Ruahine Street. Involving 23 miles of work, the contract for the 21-inch main being laid out towards Tiritea is now nearing completion, and it is proposed, under the latest loan schedule, to finish the remaining four miles of this work right to the reservoir at Tiritea. Tests made some time ago revealed that suitable rock foundations were available at Tiritea a large new dam on a site a little above the old weir,' and just at the fork of two streams in the Tiritea Valley. Though there are no records of the yield from the catchment area, it is known that during dry seasons the flow of the stream falls to 30,000,000 gallons a month, and that to provide for the city’s growing population additional storage capacity is urgently required. Interest and sinking fund charges on the £90,000 loan will amount to about £4950 a year, it is computed. The interest rate is 3J per cent., with a sinking fund of 2 per cent., the period of the loan being for twenty years.