OUR WATER SUPPLY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume X, Issue 2906, 22 May 1873, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR WATER SUPPLY.

To the Editor of the Hebald. Sir, In your issue of Monday Mr. Dargaville says, " amongst other things," that as I have been giving to the City Council aud ratepayers, on numerous recent occasions, " the full and unstinted benefit of my estimates, plans, brains, and all, we are of course to understand, upon his own showing, that he is paid for it.' My " own showing,' 1 according to Mr. Dargaville, being that I stated in my last communication to you, with reference to the modest proposal of Mr. Dargaville and his coadjutors, " that all plana and specifications accompanying tenders become the property of the City Councilthat to do this would, at all events, be a cheap way of obtaining for nothing valuable information, the result of years of Btudy and brain work ; that I very much doubted whether any respectable professional man would send plans, specifications, drawings, and estimates under this proviso, and that I, for one, would not help to degrade the profession to which I have the honor to belong by doing so. This statement I now repeat; but Mr. Dargaville could not, apparently, see that, although X thought fit on Beveral occasions to give to the City Council, gratuitously, the result of my experience and investigations as to the different schemes proposed (and not as to one only), it did not necessarily follow that I should perform at my own expense a costly and difficult survey, and furnish plans, specifications, sections and estimates, on the mere chance of obtaining some £300 if my estimates were made sufficiently low, but nothing if otherwise. Mr. Dargaville, however, being unable, apparently, to resist the brilliancy of the idea, says " it becomes a fair question to ask, as a matter of public interest, who is it that pays Mr. Peppercorue for his advocacy of the Western Springs scheme?" I might, sir, with equal good taste and delicacy of feeling, ask who is it that pays Mr. Dargaville for his advocacy of a costly gravitation scheme? But as he puts thiß question, and, no doubt, expects a reply, I will inform him, for his private satisfaction as well as for a matter of public interest, that any information that I may have given to the City Council upon all the three schemes of supply, and not on one only, has been given quite gratuitously, and that fact, however astounding il may be to Mr. Dargaville, is well known to all the other members of the City Council. I wish also to state, that in a prospectus of a proposed Auckland Water Company, of which only two copies were issued, the words given by Mr. Dargaville in brackets, and which, when thus used, are usually assumed to be an extract, are not mine, but are Mr. Dargaville's, and this, I presume, is a fair specimen of this gentleman's peculiar " idiosyncracies." With regard to the coßt of pumping large bodies of water for the supply of towns, I bare taken as the basis of my estimate of the annual working expenses, the averago consumption per horse-power per hour of several of the large pumping engines used at the London water-works, from reliable data, and I find

that the East London Water Company's engines consumed two and three-quarters lbs. of coal per effective horse-power per hour, and that at the Southwark and Vauxhall Company's works the duty of the engines was nearly 70 millions of pounds lifted one foot high for every hundredweight of coal consumed, being not quite 3 lbs. per effectivo horse-power per hour. I have, however, assumed that the engines that I propose to lift one million of gallons daily to a height of 300 feet, will consume 4 lbs. of coal per horse-power per hour, or 25 per cent, more than the engines of the Southwark and Vauxhall Company ; and if Mr. D. had taken the trouble to refer to my published estimate of the annual cost of working thesis engines, he would have found that I proposed to work both engines /or 12 hours a-day for 313 working days in the year (Sundays not included), and that my estimate provided the wages for one engineer, two firemen, one labourer and cngine-<?l< , :'- , '" , ■•, tallow, oil, und hemp for packing, wear and tear, and repairs of machinery, depreciation upon engines and buildings and turncock'a wages, I with sundry other incidental expenses, amount- : I ino in all to £2732 per annum. This is not

mere theory, but the result of actual exDerieuee of the working of large steampumping engiues,—of course, with coal at an exceptionally high price, the principal item of expense would be tho fuel, but in less than two years hence it may be fairly assumed that the cost of coal will be materially loner than it is now, and will not exceed from 25s to 30s per ton. With regard to what Mr. Dargaville calls the other objectionable points ill the Western Springs scheme, I will - not waste time in replying to such visionary objections, but I must express my surprise that Mv. Durgaville should carefully abstain from alluding to the main object for ■ which my last communication was written, j which was to suggest that the merits of the j three different proposed schemes of supply be fairly tested by reliable surveys, plans, sections, and estimates, and that the whole be referred to an eminent hydraulic en/ineer, nor- residing in New Zealand, and not likely to be biassed in favour of, or against, any one of them. This is the beat answer that I can make to Mr. Dargaville's assumption of my supposed paid advocacy of the "Western Springs scheme ; but that gentleman appeavs to labour under an incurable obliquity in his mental vision, which does not permit him to see more than one side of a question at any time, and that very imperfectly, and which causes him to jump at conclusions with a perfect indifference to right or wrong results.—l am, &c., _ Eeede. S. PeppekCokn-e. May 19th, 1873.