“The community would like to see something done.”
Fellow group member Rick White said the pool dated back to the 1930s.
The Birch family donated the land and commissioned the work to construct it.
“It was pretty impressive,” White said.
“This was where the local schools swam. Many people used it for recreation and it was a local community facility - a place to go picnicking. It has huge significance.”
Group member Kate Lynch said a plan had been settled on during the collective’s last community meeting.
It includes cleaning the pool out, beautifying the surrounding area, erecting signs explaining its history, ongoing work to improve water quality and regular removal of silt.
The pool, even if restored, won’t be suitable for swimming, but the Ototoka Stream will flow through it.
Beautifying the area would make it a destination and a welcoming point from the western side of Whanganui, she said.
It is located near Pākaraka.
“Then there are some picnic tables and walking tracks,” Lynch said.
“That was the clear direction community members wanted us to take with the pool.”
The group’s submission to the committee includes a statement from Maryanne Birch, a descendant of the pool’s founders.
“If the park and its history [dating back to] the 1930s can be retained for all to enjoy, we support the retention of the name honouring our great-grandfather William Birch.”
The proposed project is broken into stages.
Year one involves $80,000 worth of track work and an initial pool clean-out, $7000 for signage design and installation, $15,000 for yearly maintenance works and $3000 to fix the reserve’s boundary fence.
After that, there would be $25,000 for yearly silt removal (for the first five years), then $15,000 each year after that.
Before the initial clean-out, the track to the pool will need reinforcement works to provide access for the appropriate equipment to reach the pool to clean it out and remove the silt.
As the council owns the facility, it would need to fund the majority of the work through its next Long Term Plan.
Ngāti Maika’s Ray Hina, who is part of the Friends of William Birch Reserve group with Lynch and White, said he lived on the pā up the road from the pool.
“For us, it was an extension of the pā or the marae.
“Our family used it quite frequently.
The community wanted to “get the place back up to how it used to be”, he said.
Lynch’s farm is on the stream below the pool.
She said the group had been testing water quality above and below it for the last 18 months.
Indications were that the quality was better below.
“We believe that is because the pool acts as a sand trap, so it plays a pretty important function in that regard.
“However, that function is lost if the sand just builds up and flows over the top.”
This summer, the group was installing small dams above the pool to filter out soil and nutrients in the event of heavy rain, she said.
De Rose said Horizons Regional Council tested the stream at the waterfall end - at Ototoka Beach - and there was a permanent no-swim rule in place because E. coli levels were too high.
Mike Tweed is an assistant news director and multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily the Whanganui District Council.
