RISING RIVER-BED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 5 April 1926, Page 5

RISING RIVER-BED

CrfRfSTCHURCH MENACED BY WAIMAKARIKI BUT NOT FOR A LONG TIME POLL FOR PROTECTION WORKS ,'B» Telegraph —Special to Th« Mail.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. H the critics of the scheme arc right. Christchurch will be wiped out by the Waimakariki in five years time, declared Mr E. ('. Hay, Engineer to the Waimakariki River Trust in the course of a conversation on Saturday on the proposed scheme of the trust to protect the city and surrounding country from the menace of the river. Mr Hay said he assumed that the critics of* the scheme were not aware what their own figures meant. Accordin" to these figures the quantity of shingle coining down the river was so great, and the bed was rising so quickly, that in five years' time the river would change its course and go the way nature intended it to go, through Christchurch. If the people who relied on these figures knew what they meant, why had they not warned the residents of Christchurch? He could only assume that they did not know what they were talking about. The figures that lliey used were based on attempts that had' been made to measure the quantity of shingle being carried down the Waimakariki during a flood, but such attempts were futile. The only way to measure the shingle was to measure it. after it had been deposited. This had been done by competent engineers and surveyors who fortunately had had data collected sixty years' ago to work on. As a result, they knew how much shingle was being deposited per annum and how much the bed of the river was being raised each year. These calculations showed that the menace of the Waimakariki was quite serious enough, but not nearly so serious as the critics of the scheme made out. The information collected by the Trust showed that there was a real danger of the Waimakariki breaking through Christchurch in about 40 years' time. The scheme that the Trust intended to carry out. if the loan poll was carried,would give immunity.to the city and surrounding country for hundreds of years.