Failure of the Yan Yean Reservoir. 115 
referring to the able report of the Select Committee of the 
Legislative Council on Sewerage and Water Supply, that 
those gentlemen who were best qualified to give an opinion 
on the subject were unanimous in describing the deterioration 
which the water would undergo by being stored in the Yan 
Yean reservoir. The language used by one physician was 
that the water would be almost incurably contaminated; by 
another, that he should not like to use the water himself. 
As regards the purity of the water, therefore, I think the 
Commissioners have disregarded the best interests of the pub- 
lic in a sanitary point of view. 
4. I object to the choice of the Commissioners, because it 
was based on insufficient data. The Select Committee, in 
their report, say “our meteorological experience in these 
colonies by no means justifies the sanguine anticipations of 
Mr. Blackburn, who himself admits that a continued drought 
for two years, or even eight months, would render the whole 
scheme a failure;” and they state the following very grave ob- 
jections to the reservoir scheme. 
1. “That it would seem to be against all experience that 
any of the sources of the Plenty should be constant in all 
seasons. 
2. “That sufficient allowance has not been made for the ef- 
fect of evaporation over so large a surface as 1,200 acres, 
the proposed superficies of the reservoir.” 
And, while they were of opinion that the advantages upon 
the whole preponderated in favor of the gravitation scheme, 
they preferred to adopt the eourse taken by Mr. Hodgkinson 
in his evidence, and declined giving a positive opinion on the 
subject. 
It is difficult to see what peculiar advantages the Select 
Committee had in view, without referring to the estimates of 
the two rival schemes which they were contrasting. The ad- 
- vantages which one scheme of water supply possesses over an- 
other, are always reducible to a money value. 
The following are the estimates for the two schemes, which 
were under the consideration of the Select Committee in 
January, 1853. 
First Cost. Annual Expense. 
Modified Gravitation Scheme £162,713 £1,450 
Mr. Hodgkinson’s Yarra Scheme 99,689 7,600 
The objections which, in the opinion of the Select Com- 
mittee, applied to Mr. Hodgkinson’s plan, had reference 
exclusively to the annual expenditure for coal and supervision, 
