Deluge holds up youth park work

Heavy rain and wet weather has pushed back the completion date for a new youth park on Koutu's Karenga Park.

The new park, being developed by the Rotorua District Council with input from the local community, was to be finished by the end of January.

However, the council's youth projects officer Jill Campbell said the completion date had been pushed back to late March due to wet weather delaying ground works.

The park has had a long history of flooding issues as it is below the level of Lake Rotorua and has a high water table. Mrs Campbell said council engineers warned that the site would not be ready for compaction until November or December.

The compaction process involves compacting dirt fill on the site to raise soil levels which will ultimately help water drain more effectively.

"We had originally hoped that the youth space would be completed by the end of January 2013 however, we've had to reschedule the project completion date to late March in the new year.

"It would have been impossible to stay on track with the original time line without incurring a higher contract price and, in all likelihood, we could have ended up with a substandard court surface if the compaction phase was rushed."

Mrs Campbell said that despite the improvements to the park, there might still be an area where water would pool during heavy rain.

"While it's not possible for the fields to ever reach top class condition we will certainly be able to improve their current poor state sufficiently for local play to take place. This is an exciting development on what had previously been a largely unusable wet space."