Turangi is swallowed up by leaves
DANIEL HUTCHINSON When the icy winds signal the beginning of winter, Turangi promptly disappears beneath a sea of leaves.
The town is one of several in the central North Island, including Atiamuri, that were built in the middle of last century to house the workers on the various hydro’ power schemes being built at the time.
These towns have wide streets lined with beautiful deciduous trees that now fill the roads, gutters and yards with huge drifts of leaves.
Taupo¯ District Council parks manager Greg Hadley has a logistical nightmare on his hands at this time of year. It is a veritable war on leaves. A modified harvester has been developed to rid the roads of leaves, vouchers are handed out to residents allowing them to dump their leaves for free and then there’s the road sweepers.
The leaves create issues around road safety, with cars sliding on the dense, rotting leaves. They also get into the drains and cause flooding issues.
‘‘The [road] sweeper trucks struggle with the big piles. They are continually having to go and empty them so the parks’ machine [the modified harvester] goes around first.’’
However, not long into the season, this year, the harvester broke down.
Hadley said it had also been an unusual season for leaves. They all seemed to drop over a much more condensed period of time, and were wet.
Wet leaves made it harder for all the machines to cope and parks staff have been struggling to keep up.
‘‘They felt very overwhelmed with leaves,’’ Hadley said.
To try and stem the tide, they hired a local contractor with a bobcat this year.
‘‘It was a real problem this year but we are on top of the volume.’’
He had received a lot of comment from locals this year about the leaves.
‘‘This year has been one of our worst years for that.’’