THE KAWARAU SCHEME.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1926, Page 8

THE KAWARAU SCHEME.

OUTLOOK NOT PROMISING. MUOT WATER IN GORGE. jPRUHLEM NOT YET SOLVED. Dunedin, Sept. 1. The cold facts of the Kawarau scheme have to be faced, however distasteful it may be to have to give them to the public. At 8.30 o’clock this morning the water on the river at Cromwell had dropped 3ft. At 6 o’clock this evening it had dropped only an inch or two more. Again an eager body of treasurehunters made their way to the various claims in the gorge. The river had dropped sufficiently to enable them to fossick along the sides of the banks, and in .some .instances encouraging prospects were obtained, The river had fallen a foot or two 'below the depth registered last year during tho winter period when it was below any depth recorded during the past 25 yeas, but there was still a great volume of water racing through the gorge. The result was that the claim-holders had to confine their attentions to fossicking on the banks. The Kawarau scheme to lay the bed of the river nearly bare has so far not been successful, and it seems hardly possible that the prospects can now be improved. SOURCE OU WATER IN GORGE. The optimism with which many of the people in the locality regarded the project is no doubt praiseworthy, but they candidly admit now that they are disappointed. After the river has been given over 30 hours to clear itself in the gorge a great volume of water is still coursing along, and the claimholders have no chance of getting anywhere near the bed. How deep the river may be in tho gorge can only be estimated in the narrower parts. There can be no doubt it is many feet deep. TRe position really is that the prospectors may be able to fossick along the banks of the gorge for gold, but they have no chance of getting into those parts of the river which they had eagerly anticipated would be bared to them. A common question among the claimholders on file banks to-day was: Where was thp water coming from? This question is so far unanswerable. Some suggest that there is a seepage from Lake Wakatipu in the vicinity of the dam. Others say that the Shotovcr is solely to blame for the volume of water in the Kawarau. - The experts say that there can be little seepage from the lake and that the Shotover River is primarily responsible for the fact that the Kawarau is etill carrying a great volume of water to the Molyneux. QUESTION REGARDING THE SHOTOVER. Whether the claim-holders are prepared to consider the cost of also damming the Shotover River cannot, of course, be ascertained at the present moment, but there is no question that from the condition of the river to-night the damming scheme has not proved successful. Many of the claim-holders in the gorge make no secret of their disappointment. Fortunately, most of them took the precaution of restricting their expenditure and adopted the “wait and see“ policy, and they will not, therefore, be faced with any severe expenditure. The holders of many of the claims have also made the disconcerting discovery that the banks dropped sheer down into the hidden depths, thus preventing their doing anything until a greater area of level river bottom can be disclosed. The whole story of the claim-holders in the gorge is summed up in the question: Where is the water coming from? Until that question can be answered, and a remedy provided to lower the waters, the Kawarau scheme, so far as the gorge is concerned, cannot be deemed a success. Gf course, the scheme is in its initial stages and measures may yet be discovered to reduce the flow of water in the gorge.