The Stantin Duchy was not alone in wanting to get some work done over the winter. Count Samo did too.
Taking advantage of the Sandy River's reduced winter flow, the riverbank renovation project under Bunta City's overall redevelopment plan picked up speed and began clearing the accumulated silt from the riverbed.
During this cleanup, the Xinfei Merchant Guild's newly developed Large Magic Excavator made its official debut.
Compared with the Small Magic Excavators previously used mainly for farmland improvement, the newly developed Large Magic Excavator still fell far short of Earth's excavators and had to be hauled around by horse-drawn wagons. However, its base and digging arm had largely been reproduced, and once positioned properly, its digging efficiency was roughly equal to that of Earth's small two-ton excavators.
With the help of magic machinery, the riverbed cleanup went very smoothly. In just two winter months, nearly all the silt accumulated over the past few years in the Bunta City stretch of the Sandy River had been cleared away, lowering the entire riverbed by almost five meters.
Meanwhile, excavation had also begun downstream of Bunta City on the canal linking the Sandy River to the Rum River.
According to Porter, who was overseeing the project, digging the canal through would take about a year to a year and a half.
In view of the Sandy River riverbank renovation plan and the canal's eventual opening, Count Samo also took Xu Yi's advice and prepared to select a site upstream of Bunta City for a dam.
Besides flood control and water storage, the dam had another purpose that Xu Yi had yet to tell Count Samo about: it would eventually serve as a hydroelectric power station.
If it could be built as Xu Yi envisioned, then even with the Sandy River's modest flow,