Sewerage Pipeline Successfully Launched Into Poverty Bay

Gisborne's 6000-foot concrete sewerage outfall pipeline was successfully launched into Poverty Bay last December.

An involved and intricate engineering feat, with no margin for error, the launching was a triumph for the engineering staff of the City Council and Canterbury Pipelines Ltd, who had laboured for more than a year assembling the thousands of pipes and preparing the launching equipment.

The first concrete pipeline of such magnitude to be successfully launched in the world, the operation went comparatively smoothly, and was completed in three-and-a-half days. Only one major snag was encountered, and this was overcome by the cutting free of the 56-foot seaward section of the monorail.

The long and tedious job of bedding-in the pipe by the use of air hoses operated by skin divers followed the launching.

The first 1500-foot section of the pipeline moving along the monorail and out to sea. The pipeline was pulled by a cable attached to its nose-cone which extended out to a pulley anchored to the sea bed and back to a massive winch installed further along the beach.

Looking up the launching site as the first section (at left) was being winched out, with the other three sections waiting in readiness.

The man largely responsible for the initiation of the schene, Mr Harold Williams (City Engineer), makes a final inspection of the nose-cone equipment before the pipe started on its 6000-foot journey.

Skin divers, Messrs D. Twiss and B. Robertson, recovering the skates on which the pipeline moved from the end of the monorail.

The first section of the pipeline moving down the monorail and into the sea. At rear is the tower from which the supervising engineers controlled the launching.