ELECTRICITY AND WATER.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 932, 10 January 1890, Page 27

ELECTRICITY AND WATER.

The electric lighting of Wellington may fairly b,e pronounced to have

proved, so far, a success. The light itself is excellent. It has produced a complete and most favourable metamorphosis in the nocturnal aspect of this city as compared with that which it wore during the time of the inadequate gas-lighting. The main thoroughfares now are always brightly illuminated, and if in those parts of the city most remote from its centre the illumination does not entirely realise the over-sanguine expectations of the residents, the shortcoming is due rather to, those anticipations being over-pitched than to a.ny fan,lb on the part of the electric light itself. There is, at all events, a vast improvement everywhere over the gas-lamp period. We do not mean to assert that equally good results in point of brilliancy could not have been obtained with gas. We are quite well aware that gas is capable of supplying quite as much light as electricity, the latter being used on the incandescent system. But if an equal amount of light were furnished by means of gas the . PbSii be ye r y much greater. Ic

is one highly satisfactory feature about the present electric lighting of Wellington that at no increase of cost we obtain an enormously superior light., which shines all night instead of being cut off during the greater part of each night, while “ Corporation moonlight nights” are practically abolished. That is to say, the city is lighted whenever this ie practically needed, instead of being left in darkness whenever the moon in its first quarter, or so, is hidden behind an impenetrably dense mass of clouds. Ail these things are agreeable reforms. Reports occasionally leach us of failure or largely-impaired brilliancy in the case of some lamps in the remoter parts of the city. We have made inquiry with regard to these complaints and find that in the majority of instances they are groundless. In other cases the temporary failure of two or three lamps has been due to mere accident, and the defects have soon been remedied. In most instances they have been caused by the wilful breakage of the lamps by larrikins, who dearly love to treat them as targets. The larrikin is a pestilent imp who cares nought for anything on earth save his own passing gratification—always of some disreputable kind, and generally injurious to other people—and so no consideration of the public convenience is likely ever to deter one of these wretched imps from smashing electric lamps at pleasure. Sooner or later, however, the public will decline to subject .its convenience or safety to the caprices of a gang of worthless cubs, and will apply the only remedy that has ever proved efficacious in such cases—a sound whipping. The birch, if well and smartly applied after the “good old” public school fashion, would probably be an amply effective remedial agent, and the more formidable “ cat ” need not be called into requisition. Meanwhile, pending the whole-hearted adoption of this sole remedy for the pest, the citizens must rest content to have some of th9ir electric lights left nightly in darkness at the pleasure of the street larrikin. Failures from other causes are rare, and have hardly ever proved serious in their extent.

There is another question, however, in connection with ourelectrio lighting, which has caused some little anxiety. The light costs the city not only money but water. It has long been known that the quantity of water used by the generating engines is far greater than was calculated upon by the municipal authorities. The discrepancy is explained by an alleged difference between the nominal and actual power required. In other words, if the requisite power be nominally supplied it will not be sufficient, because the actual power exercised is considerably less, and so there must be a surplus of nominal power to secure the actual performance of the work required, which, of course, means an excess of water. As this point is still uuder the consideration of the authorities we shall not at present dwell further upon it, but apart from the question of liability on either side there is another ease of a very practical character :—Will the city water supply continue to prove capable of meeting the large demand? We find on inquiry that the depth of the large reservoir " at Kiarori, from which the ; power for the electric lighting is ob- : tained, is steadily decreasing, the quantity taken being considerably in excess of the inflow. On the other hand the Wainui o-mata supply is not yet being drawn upon to its full capacity. Indeed, the quantity drawn for public and private purposes, even under the system of wholesale waste still in vogue, is less than the yield of the. stream, so that the storage at Wainui is not yet being drawn upon at all. This is conclusively proved by the fact that water continues to flow away by the however, that we are only now at the beginning of what is usually our dry season, fhe past year’s rainfall has been unprecedentedly small. The average fall of previous years was 52 inches. In 1889 it was only a fraction over 31 inches. There is, therefore, a deficiency of 21 inches, or not far from 50 per cent. This is a very formidable shortcoming. It must of necessity mean a material shrinkage in the springs which are the sources of our supply, and as what is ordinarily the “ dry season ” here—viz., January to May or June—has only just begun, we can hardly count upon any substantial replenishment for several months. At no distant date, failing such improbable replenishment, it may

become necessary to have recourse to the Wainui supply in supplement of the Karori reservoir for electriclighting purposes, and then we might have to face the alternative, whether to introduce and enforce a more economical mode of water consumption, or to suspend the supply of water-power to the electric lighting machinery. Things have not reached this pass yet, but we cannot prepare too soon for contingencies. All waste in the use of the present water supply ought to be rigidly checked, and, whan detected, severely punished.