114 Failure of the Yan Yean Reservoir. 
already been expended; but it is the opinion of many that 
they will more probably cost £1,000,000. 2. Because the 
Commissioners, in erecting temporary works for supplying the 
city from the Yarra, have shown that, for the comparatively 
small sum of £30,000, the same object can, to a certain ex- 
tent, be accomplished; and, indeed, if they had erected their 
temporary works at the right place, viz., near the junction of 
the Merri Creek with the Yarra, about a mile and a half 
from the reservoir at St. Peter’s Church, the temporary 
works being distant half a mile from the same reservoir, and, 
so as to have avoided the surface drainage and sewerage of 
Collingwood and Richmond, we could have dispensed with 
the Yan Yean Water Worksaltogether. The expense of the 
additional horse-power required for the increased distance of 
one mile, which would be about six horses added to forty, 
and the saving in the carriage of coal, are trifling advantages 
to be purchased at a sacrifice of the public health, in a popu- 
lous and wealthy city, which this measure really involves, as 
it has been clearly shown, by chemical analysis, that the wa- 
ter at Prince’s Bridge contains four times more of impurities 
and matters prejudicial to health than the water at the junc- 
tion of the Merri Creek with the Yarra. 
But let us suppose that it would have been necessary to 
expend £60,000 in the erection of permanent works for 
raising water from the Yarra into the reservoir at St. Peter's 
Church, this would have been decidedly preferable as a com- 
mercial enterprise, when we contrast the interest of £60,000 
at 10 per cent. with that of £600,000. 
The Commissioners have thus altogether sacrificed the pe- 
cuniary interests of the public in their selection of the gravi- 
tation scheme, and have ignored the principle upon which a 
selection of either scheme is always based, namely, its adapt- 
ation to afford an ample supply of water at the lowest possi- 
ble cost. 
3. I object to the Commissioners’ scheme because I do not 
think that in this climate a large swamp covering 7,000,000 
square yards of surface is a suitable place for storing water 
for the consumption of a large city. It has been the natural 
receptacle for the surface drainage of the surrounding ranges, - 
with only a very small natural outlet or water course. The 
consequence has been a vast accumulation of green slimy 
mud, the result of decaying organic matters, which will 
greatly alter and deteriorate the water of the Plenty, which, 
within its own banks, is exceedingly pure. And I find, on 
