THE ELICTRIC TRAMWAYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2527, 20 August 1902, Page 29

THE ELICTRIC TRAMWAYS.

THE LEE STREAM SCHEME

A good deal of interest is taken in the contents of the report prepared by Mr J. T. Noble Anderson, Iho Drainage Board's engineer, on the proposal to utilise the Lee Stieam for generating the electric power for the city tramways, and various statements have been put forward as to the opinions he lias advanced. In a conversation with one of our staff Mr Anderson stated that the report was entirely under his control, and he had never disclosed its contents to anyone, consequently any statements made as to the contents were obviously based on conjecture. In a letter he had written to the Town Council from Outram, which was read before the council recently, ho had set forth that to carry out the full scheme proposed by the city engineer would cost £70,000, but the statement made that he had reporter! that there was not trufficient water in the Lee Stream was obviously conjecture from the known investigations he had been making, «nd was not substantially correct, as his estimate of the minimum and average flow of the river differed but little from that made by the city engineer. Mr Anderson says lie holds the copyright of tho report he ha* made to the City Council, and wlile he wishes tho council to make the widest use of it, and challenged tho closest investigation into its statements lie absolutely declines to part with his copyrights, and will vigorously prosecute anyone who infringes them by publication without his exprets sanction to the utmost limit of the law. There aie, said Mr And<r*on, 18 practical points brought out that cannot ho got in text books. Engineers generally, when they look for points of r. huh they h.iie no experience in to\t books, find that what they require is not theie, for the simple, rraton that text books are, ac a rule, written by pvofo-sors and theoretical men, and tho practical man who ha a experience of the difficulties of a csue has seldom got the tinia cr tlie opportunity to read text book*. Many of thrbo point's, which are constantly occurring in work 5 , are krought up in this report Thece are matt *is that have hepn at quired 1)>- Mr Ander-on m his 20 year*' hydraulicking cNperience while working under such men a* BiUemau and Hill, of Manchester, England, and by hi e own experience, bought very often by trial anil failure ; and that goe^ foi more tb.in ran be realised or expre-serl in money. In what appears in y the report, in concrete form, are many -very valuable engineering points, which have not, i-o far as he knows, yet been published in any well known text bookg. " I may mention," continued Mr Anderson, "that come years ago, in connection with the examination of engineers, I drew up a number of hints, fueh as the6C, and one university coach to whom. 1 lent them used them for his own pupils, and quite recently told me that by the uf=e of them lie hstel mado more than 60 guinea*. There are," concluded Mr Anderson, " many more times more matter in this repoit than in the hints referred to."

It may be mentioned that the report is con+ained in a printed pamphlet of 45 pages, and contain.* a-bout 13,000 woids,'