THE New Zealand Times
THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 1887.
(PUBLISHED DAILY).
With which are incorporated the *Wellington Independent*, established 1845, and the New Zealander.
Recognising the grave importance of the Wellington water-supply question, and the urgent necessity of obtaining an independent professional report on the condition of the Wainui-o-mata Waterworks, we resolved that if the City Council refused to do their manifest duty in this respect, we would do it for them.
We had already given to the citizens a full and trustworthy account of the position of affairs so far as this could be done by laymen, but we held that something more than this was needed to satisfy the public. Nothing short of a report by a competent professional engineer would meet the requirements of the case.
Accordingly, we strenuously urged upon the Council over and over again that they should take steps to obtain such a report. The Mayor supported our view of the case. But the Council chose instead to adopt the mere temporising and procrastinating expedient of appointing a Committee comprising the senior Councillors for each ward.
We have already remarked that, however worthy and respectable those gentlemen may be, their opinions as laymen upon a grave technical question are not worth a rush. Seeing, therefore, that the Council were determined to adopt this inadequate and unsatisfactory policy, we felt that it was our duty to supply what was so clearly needed.
We were able to furnish to the public the first independent lay report on the causes of the defective water supply, and we resolved that in like manner an independent professional report should be given to the citizens through our columns, as the Council was so reluctant to procure one.
We therefore requested Mr Nicholas Marchant, C.E., whose ability and experience as a hydraulic engineer are well known, to proceed to Wainui-o-mata and to furnish us with a report on the waterworks, their construction, condition, and cause of failure.
Mr Marchant’s reputation as a hydraulic engineer is sufficiently well-established to need little testimony on our part. The Wellington citizens have not forgotten how ably and successfully he carried out the first and second undertakings for the supply of water to this city, which supply would even now be ample for all present requirements had his advice been fully acted upon by the Council.
We received Mr Marchant’s report last night, and have the pleasure of publishing it in our columns this morning. It will repay careful perusal.
Mr Marchant, it will be seen, has arrived at several very important conclusions, which may be briefly summed up as follow:
(1) He states emphatically that the main source of waste is the defective sludge valve, to which we drew attention last Monday, and through which he estimates that 687,221 gallons of water escape to waste daily.
(2) He holds that this state of things argues grave negligence on somebody’s part.
(3) He recalculates the loss through leakage from the race at 167,400 gallons daily, so that the aggregate waste amounts to 854,621 gallons.
(4) He condemns the adoption of a “well” instead of an iron standpipe, and of a concrete race instead of continuous iron mains.
(5) He considers the quality of the concrete used in the construction of the race, so far as it was visible, to be “indifferent.”
(6) And, last but not least, he asserts that the total quantity of water yielded by the Wainui-o-mata River has been grossly exaggerated, and is not more than 2,500,000 gallons in dry weather.
Here are some very hard and distasteful nuts for the citizens and their municipal representatives to crack. All idea of “a thousand horse-power” being available for letting, and of our being able to supply Petone and Lower Hutt vanishes into thin air.
So far from our having an unlimited supply, which we may waste at will, we have a distinctly limited quantity to draw on, and have none at all to waste or give away. All the outrageous gasconading that has been dealt out in such wholesale profusion about our “magnificent and unlimited water supply” has been completely exploded.
We have a supply which is very good and ample for all legitimate uses if properly attended to, but we have not a drop to spare; and Mr Marchant tells us that we shall very soon have none available during the dry season to let out for motive power.
A similar conclusion was, it will be remembered, arrived at by Mr Higginson, and substantially expressed in a letter which appeared in our columns. All that absurd boasting about the water supply has exercised a most pernicious influence.
It has led the public to believe that they could use as much water as they pleased. There has been seen the spectacle night after night of innumerable hoses lashed upright to fences or trees, and allowed to play all night on gardens, or taps turned on and let to run day and night down sinks and gratings.
But the ratepayers’ eyes are, or ought to be, opened at last by Mr Marchant’s report, and we believe that they will not allow themselves any longer to be hoodwinked or their trust to be trifled with.
