Threat of Longer Delay

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 61, 3 June 1927, Page 8

Threat of Longer Delay

Power-House Difficulties Waikato a Reluctant River FEATS so ‘ spectacular that they would put the moving pictures in the shade, and dazzle the “stunt” artists of Hollywood, are performed daily at Arapuni, where the turbulent Waikato is being harnessed to answer the needs of man. Not without reluctance, however, is the river submitting to conquest, and at present there threatens to be indefinite delay owing to difficulties with the powerhouse foundations.

CO far the Arapuni project has been advanced with wonderful success and smoothness, except for one difficulty—the powerhouse site. Planned to occupy a position in the depths of the Waikato’s wall-sided gorge, the future powerhouse, as seen yesterday, is a sheet of green water, broken by the conduits of a couple of

pumps, and cut off from the river only by a temporary dam, breasted with sandbags through which the waters of the flooded stream were trickling. Delay in the completion of the scheme threatens Auckland with a dire power-shortage, and if, in the future, their houses are plunged into darkness, Aucklanders will be able to reflect that an instrumental factor was the treacherous formation of the Waikato’s bed just at the spot chosen for the powerhouse. What was expected to be solid, incorruptible rhyolite has proved to be an unreliable mass of rubble. The rock is fractured in many places, and the deepest and firmest foundations will thus be necessary if vibration from the whizzing rotors is to be overcome.

The contractors and officials, of course, make only a formal statement of their difficulties, but among well-informed outsiders it is common talk that the erection of the powerhouse will not now go on until the completion of the main dam has dried the streambed and eliminated the first of the major difficulties. Perched on fhe abrupt cliffs crowding in round the powerhouse site are strong searchlights for night operations, but even nocturnal shifts will be able to effect little tangible advance until a firm foundation can be secured. Other Works Go Ahead Meanwhile the other phases of the great scheme are going ahead with contrasting vigour. Three great tunnels, 400 feet long, have been punched through the rock from the plateau to the powerhouse site. From their upper end, 17,5 feet above the river, can be seen the deep tints of the pool by which the powerhouse foundations are submerged. In flood, the Waikato seethes at bullet-speed through the diversion tunnel created to leave dr;y the site of the main dam, which is fast rising to colossal proportions. Stunts in Mid-Air

Above it, hung across the cleft cut by the river, is a wondeful mesh of conveyors, guy-ropes, and general rigging. Here is where the movie-stunts are performed. Concrete is mixed in huge sheds on the pleateau, and poured into the gorge through an intricate shute, elaborately counter-balanced and controlled. Halfway up the spindly chute an ex-sailor is on duty at an airy post. His job, when a hard batch of concrete lodges at an elbowjoint in the chute, is to clamber up a dizzy plank ladder, and set the flowin motion again. Over the transformed valley there dwells the atmosphere of industry The shattering din of automatic rivetters, blends with the ceaseless roll of the concrete mixers. Men, idly puffing cigarettes, drop hundreds of feet in buckets dangling from slender wire. Others ride casually across the gorge in metal-bins. It is all wonderfully impressive and spectacular, but perhaps the most vivid impression retained by the visitor is of the beauty and fascinating colour of the Waikato, frothing through the gorge.