“CONCRETE ONLY REMEDY”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 162, 29 September 1927, Page 7

“CONCRETE ONLY REMEDY”

CLEANING PARNELL BATHS BUCKET BRIGADE’S WORK A FTER a fortnight of hard, unpleasant work, the men engaged in cleaning out the Parnell Baths have still a lot of work to do. While the team could work in the hard, dry mud, with harrows, good progress was made, and about 100 loads an hour were emptied over the side into the harbour, huge piles of mud appearing all round the outside of the baths. Water seepage has, however, turned the main bed of black mud into a soupy looking mess, and the men have had to undertake the slow and laborious method of a bucket brigade, as the only available means of dealing with it. To the lay mind nothing appears to be so necessary as the use of watersluicing and the use or a suction pump, if one is available. Many leading swimmers have been down to see the baths. Without exception they believe that concreting the bottom is the only remedy. Even after the silt is cleaned out, the papa bottom grows an objectionable slimy plant, which becomes loose and floats. Concrete could be cleaned every few tides, they hold, but the cleaning of the papa bottom is quite impossible.