ARAPUNI NOTES

Waipa Post, Volume 36, Issue 2147, 21 April 1928, Page 5

ARAPUNI NOTES

DEPRESSION IN TRADE. SINCE THE CONTRACTORS COMPLETED BIG WORKS. Business has been very'quiet since' the contractors finished operations' on a large scale. Two large stores have closed their doors, and other remaining shops are experiencing a very lean time. " Trade here is dead," said one shopkeeper to a representative of the Putaruru Press. " Not only have we lost the trade of those who have been paid off, but those now employed by the Public Works Department are of a different class. They are not such free spenders," he added; However, the steady flow of visitors to inspect the works has done much to relieve tthe (situation, and "foreign capital" has been left in the settlement in consequence. Temporary shacks have sprung up., like mushrooms at all vantage points where the sight-seers are likely to be waylaid, and from these buildings, composed mostly of a shell of wood and iron, may be obtained fruits, ices, biscuits, tea, hot water, cigarettes, and other likely requirements, even down to boot laces. From the window ledge of each the inevitable gramophone grinds out the latest popular melody. " Oh, it's far larger than the dam that burst in Gafjfornia," stated a male tripper, witnj;a slight American accent, who was "conducting a party of ladies over the works. "If this dam went there would be an awful catastrophe, and Cambridge and Hamilton would be simply swept away by a wall of water. The ground is not too stable, and it would take four days for the lake to empty," he concluded, before passing out of hearing. Some people seem to take a peculiar delight in conjuring up horrors, and, quite apart from the fact that Arapuni is a British engineering job, and the Los : Angeles dam an American piece of work, anyone capable of understanding what his eyes perceive will not readily picture the wall of water even if a most violent earthquake did destroy the dam wall. As the dam contains 95,000 cubic yards of concrete, weighing nearly 150,000 tons, it would take shifting. Further, the length of the dam wall in a straight liiie is about 200 feet, while a few chains below, round about the outlet of the diversion tunnel, the gorge narrows down to about 30 feet in width. With 150,000 tons of broken concrete jammed in that narrow space there would not be much chance of a "wall of water," so that on the face of it, unless the whole gorge collapses, the most nervous resident in the towns named may sleep o' nights, and sleep without any qualms.