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, j Install Draining System j At Phoenix Fair Grounds ! j Improvement in Stable Area to Do Away With Knee-Deep Muck PHOENIX, Ariz., Aug, 29. The Arizona State Fair Commission is taking action to get the horsemen who race their thoroughbreds at the State Fair track out of the mud. Its not the track but the stable area atwhich this operation is aimed. The track itself, together with the rest of the Fair Grounds, is well drained. But even a light rain turns the stable area into a bog. Its located on lower land in the extreme northwest corner of the grounds. The corridors between the barns are narrow. And the long blocks of stalls have slanting roofs which shoot rainwater off into the corridors. After the rains last season several of them were particularly heavy there were some patches in the stable area that never did dry out. At times the muck was knee deep on men and animals alike. Vehicles sank into the stuff so deeply that tractors had to be called to haul them out. Last Saturday the State Fair Commission took action to dry up the barns. At 10:30 i a. m. it interrupted its regular meeting to , witness a test demonstration of a uniqu new drainage system in one of the corridors Under the direction of George Blake, executive secretary of the commission, men with fire hoses poured water on the stable roofs. The water streamed off the roofs onto a porous roadway covering the cor-; ridor, sank into the road, was carried under . the surface to a two and a half-foot-wide j cistern, which sinks 39 feet into an under-j lying geological structure of gravel. Was Second Test I I The test was the second to be made. Earlier in the week immediately after the test strip was completed the equivalent of ; two inches of rain was poured on the strip during a two and a half -hour period. The test strip collected no surface water. Satisfied with the demonstration and with reports by experts that the gravel strata at 39 feet underlies the entire section, the commission approved construction throughout the barn area. In all, 14 corridors and two lateral roadways will be surfaced; a total of 42 cisterns sunk. The improvement will be undertaken ; without cost to taxpayers. The State Fair Commission operates out of its own reve nues and also makes capital improvements : from its own receipts. I The construction is unique. The roadway ! is excavated to a depth of one foot. Then j a layer of asphalt emulsion is laid on the bare ground. This seals the ground, preventing water from sinking into it. On top of this is one inch of chat, a fine crushed rock. Next comes a thick layer of heavy 1 gravel. Water can flow easily through this gravel. On top of the gravel come three layers more of chat, each progressively smaller. Each layer of the crushed rock is rolled , before the next is placed. The chat holds the gravel in place, but, being porous, permits the water to sink down into the gravel A top layer is fine chat and sand, which I holds its shape tenaciously, but is also porous. I The roadway is shaped so that it drains internally to the mouths of the cisterns. Each cistern has a steel cover punctured with holes and. set flush with the bottom ! of the layer of heavy gravel. Direct rainfall and that shooting into the corridors from j the roofs of the barns sinks into the road-I way to the heavy gravel and is carried to the cistern mouths, where it drops 39 feet ; to the geological strata of gravel under- ground and is there carried off by natures .underground drainage system.
