Living Heritage -
This is the pump station at Black Point that runs the North Otago Irrigation Scheme
At the Black Point pump station (seen above) there is a special screen (the silver piece seen at the bottom of the concrete in the water on your left) to prevent anything being pumped through the irrigation pipes that is not water eg: sticks, dead animals and stones etc
DEFINITION:
A canal is an artificial irrigation channel built to move water from one place to another.
Black Point is an irrigation base that pumps water to farm land. To install the canals for moving water for this scheme it took from February 2005 to February 2006.
The Ponding area is a large intake facility. The gates at Bortons Pond (locally known as The Ponding Area) can open or close to let in 27,000 litres of water into the canals. The gates are solar powered by the sun's energy and are controlled from Twizel by remote control/computers.
If the canals are carefully put in/constructed using clay like soil and the correct slope they should last at least fifty years. If the canals need to turn quickly, a concrete slab is put across the side of the turn so that the banks of the canal don't split/ break with all the pressure from the water.
These are the control gates that let the water into the Ponding Area from the Waitaki River. You can see the solar panel at the top left hand corner of this photo.
Bortons Pond already existed because another irrigation scheme developed this in the late 1970's. So all the workers had to do was make the canal and the gates, once permission was gained to take water from Bortons Pond. One condition was that there was a wall / barrier built to let water into the canal but not fish.
At the canal intake there are posts at the bottom of the Bortons Pond side to hang onto in case you fall into the water.
© 2007 – Page created by: Simon and Jazz
