OUR WATER SUPPLY.

Evening Star, Issue 16992, 14 March 1919, Page 6

OUR WATER SUPPLY.

~ ~ : * TO THK EDITOR. Sir, —'Whether Cr Gordon Macdonald is strictly correct or not in stating that water.for the Dunedin City water supply has been utilised from tho emergency inti#© on the Leith, the fact remains he has drawn attention to the pollution of a stream used by picnickers, and also a possible source of water supply for th© City. Cr Macdonald, in his letter to your paper, draws just criticism on tho Lee Stream scheme. Without utilising Fortification Creek, or building reservoirs with filters, or making use of afforestation (all costly extras), it is difficult to sec how tho City is to obtain five to eight million gallons ot good water per day from the Leo Stream at the estimated cost, seeing an official statement of a dry season gives the flow as 4.000. 000 gal per day oil a 20-day average. A statement was nuuio in tho Press a year or so ago that an experienced engineer (Mr Slingcr) had a gravitation scheme which would meet the. City’s requirements for years to como at a comparatively small cost. ’ . . That tho Silverstrcnm is not made tho most of is apparent to anyone who visits it even during February March (tho only two mouths in the year that om* .Flipplios fail us). Ibis is due, to tho method of conveying the water to the City in an open sieve-like race. Hr Macdonald quotes the City Engineers estimate ot 4,500,000 gal per day as the consumption of the City in water. Figures given to me personally by the City Engineer acts the average water at all the intakes at about 2.000. 000 gal per day. Is this a discrepanev 9 The amount of water consumed (if it is 4,500,OOOgal) is far too high comnared with a Scottish city with over three times our population. It ta - l . ces l o’oSo’OGoiui ner dav through filters in its 10,000, OOOgal reservoir. It w a clean, healthy city, and tho population are thrifty Scots, of course. —I am, etc., Frke La - xce * March 14.