MARAETOTARA FLOODING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 57, 16 March 1945, Page 4

MARAETOTARA FLOODING

Sir,—ln reference to flooding at Valley I desire to malce a few remarks and offer what I consider is a solution to remedy the trouble. A few irresponsible persons are busyputting around a yarn that th© writer was the cause of the flood; by removing a bank on the section adjoining the public pound. As a former owner of this section,, I was, informed when I purchased the section some five years ago 4 .. that a drowning fatality had occurred at! this very spot, so being the father of three babies. I immediately removed heaps of loose rock, debris, scrub etc. from alongside the creek, : levelling the sides to make same reasonably safe. Tlic heaps of rubble debris, etc. has with the rassL. •5 3 1 1 ing of time and circulation of the i yarn, developed into a high bank, : and eventually will reach the proportions of the knob on Whale Island. Although I am lo busy Aviith own activities to be concerned over people with more tongue than ; I will spare a little time to en-, lighten them on what is definitely the cause of the Hood, as far as the Maraetotara stream is concerned. I 1 understand some seven to ten years ago, perhaps longer, the Maraetotara 1 stream useld to flow from the. gorge down Valley Road near the street. ' A former Borough. Council decided 1 to change its course by digging a 1 "drain" one-third of the width of. " the former creek bed. Now Sir, if anyone will measure the width of the creek bed in the Maraetotara they will find it three to six times wider than the new channel put in by the Council through the' sections in Valley Road. 1 Therefore, 1 how oah a diminished channel take any great excess of water. The Council only allowed for the every day normal output when substitute ing a narrow channel. Nature provided a wide creek bed both in the gorge and along by the street in Valley Road, and man comes along, discards the old wide course, at the mouth of the gorge, and substitutes an "enlarged drain." " Suppose the Whakatane County Council decided to change the course of the Whakatane river and divert it just out of town, and bring it through the re-, sidential area. Assume it is one mile wide and the new channel was made % mile one fourth. Either the channel would have to be very dredged after every heavy downpour, or require huge stop banks to carry excess Avith every pos-t sibility of all being swamped out. Where the. Maraetotara stream enters the narroAV channel or bottle neck is Avhere the flood starts. Any-, one holding a certificate of a 52nd ships engineer should know you can't pour a bucket, of milk through the neck of a babies feeding bottle without the overfloAV going some-t where. Yet there are a few individuals AA r ith the thinking capacity of a mosquito, avlio think the floods were caused by the removal of a few heaps of stones. I hope they don't | blame me for starting the war. Soma people haA'e suggested that the present channel should be made deep-» er, but nature Avill oppose, by silting, to widen same nature will assist. It Avould be a waste of public money to deepen it. To prove my content tion, the present channel is not as deep as when first dug. To widen it ? will cater for all the excessive Avaters the gorge can send along. If the Council Avill widen the channel, it will certainly, stop ail flooding. Yours etc.^ STAN EVANS, Valley Rd. ? Whakatane.