Water supply boost coming for city suburb
Improvements to Kelvin Grove’s water supply could come on stream sooner and cheaper than planned after well drilling struck water-bearing gravels.
The $920,000 bore is being drilled behind a fenced-off area on the corner of Palmerston North’s Railway Rd and Roberts Line.
City council senior project engineer Katherine Stannard said the plan was to drill to a depth of 360 metres to strike a known underground aquifer to boost supplies to the North East Industrial area and to Kelvin Grove.
But contractor Nevill Webb and Son had already struck promising results at 290 metres.
‘‘If this layer is thick enough, with good quality water and a sufficient flow rate, we may not have to drill to the full 360 metres, which would give us some considerable savings,’’ said Stannard.
The drill had already passed through aquifers at three shallower levels in search of stronger flows and the option of withdrawing to the deepest of those, if it turned out to be the best choice, also remained.
The bore is a key ingredient in efforts to boost the city’s water supplies, particularly to the elevated suburbs overlooking Palmerston North’s low-lying areas.
Kelvin Grove depended on the bores to provide pressure that could not be delivered uphill from the main city network, which was fed from the Turitea dam on the Tararua Range side of the Manawatu River.
Water asset engineer Dora Luo said Kelvin Grove was the fastestgrowing area of the city, but there had been no upgrades to its water supply since 2004.
The yield from existing bores at Roberts Line and Keith St was declining, not because the supply was running out, but because of challenges keeping the bore pumps and mechanics working effectively.
The new bore was expected to be able to supply 250 cubic metres of water an hour, increasing the area’s supply by 50 per cent.
Once the bore was complete and the screens were put in place, there would be further costs associated with the pump station, treatment facility and connecting pipe work.
The council would continue to treat city water supplies from all sources with fluoride and chlorine.
As part of the water supply improvement programme, the council had also sunk a third bore at Papaioea Park, where bores constructed in the 1950s and in 2001 were no longer producing as well as they used to.
The new bore was approaching completion, still needing a resource consent from Horizons Regional Council to allow the taking of water, and was expected to be in use before next summer.
The oldest of the three bores would be retained as a back up only.
The city’s existing seven bores usually provided less than 40 per cent of the city’s water.