EELS, ALL ALIVE-O, AT HORA HORA

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 62, 4 June 1927, Page 17

EELS, ALL ALIVE-O, AT HORA HORA

VICTIMS OF PENSTOCKS some of them of prodigious size, have been phenomenally plentiful lately at the Hora Hora hydro-electric works, where they are trapped in the entrances to the penstocks. Ou Thursday, when the New Zealand dairy factory managers visited Hora Hora and Arapuni, their curiosity was stirred by the activities of a maD who, clad in waders, patrolled the up-stream face of the screens guard ing the penstocks, and at times lowered a dredge-like arrangement into the water. When it was hauled up the face of the screens this device scraped the gratings clean of waterborne debris, which accumulates in considerable quantities. Many eels and trout, trapped against the iron mesh, through which streams a powerful current, are brought to the surface. Some eels, including a few of great size, slip through the screens into the turbine chambers, where they can be caught before they are drawn downward on to the blades of the turbines. What damage the Waikato trout stocks have suffered through Hora Hora will later be more than compensated for by the creation of an ISmile lake backed up by the ArapuD.i dam. This sheet of water the Auckland Acclimatisation Society hopes ultimately to make a second Taupo.