THE CITY WATER SUPPLY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23055, 4 December 1936, Page 10

THE CITY WATER SUPPLY

The ceremony, which was performed yesterday, of turning the supply now made available from the Deep Creek into the municipal water system marked, as Councillor Begg, chairman of the Water Committee of the Corporation, justly said, an epoch in the development of the water service of the city. The effect of the completion of the Deep Creek scheme will be to augment the supply to the appreciable extent of 1\ million gallons a day, and this addition to the water resources of the city should afford ample protection for many years against the danger of a serious shortage, of which the householders have had several unfortunate experiences, after any prolonged spell of dry weather. The utilisation of this new source of supply is, however, of special importance from various points of view. • For it is possible that the scheme may, when the necessity arises, as must be the case as the city grows and the demands upon its water service expand, be so developed as to yield, according to the estimates of the Corporation engineering staff, an additional supply of 13 million gallons, for which' adequate storage may be secured. The City Council, therefore, by prosecuting the scheme which has now been brought to a favourable completion, has rendered its successors a service that should relieve them .from the necessity—for a great many years at all events —of meeting any acute problem arising out of a shortage of water The congratulations which were offered to the City Council—in particular to Councillor Begg. who has presided over the Water Committee

■ i during the period covered by the inception and execution of this scheme—and to the members of the Corporation staff, by whom the scheme was designed and under whose supervision it was carried out, were therefore, warmly merited. To the ratepayers, also, these congratulations may be extended, though we do not forget that there were a great many of them who were so short-sighted as to oppose the adoption of the Deep Creek scheme, just as they had, with a greater measure of success, previously opposed other schemes for the augmentation of the water supply of the city. The benefit of a substantia] addition to the supply will be enjoyed by the residents in all parts of Dunedin. This will be realised from the explanation by the city engineer yesterday, that the scheme has been so designed as to admit of the water from. Deep Creek being sent not only into the Ross Creek reservoir, but. also into the service reservoirs in Roslyn and into the Silverstream race leading to the southern reservoir. Indeed, by a system of connecting the mains, any pipe may be used to discharge into any other pipe in the system, so that full control over the distribution of the water is secured.