SYDNEY WATER SUPPLY BY GRAVITATION. 51 



where they would part company at Cook's E-iver, so that in case 

 of necessary repairs to either pipe the other could go on serving 

 both Petersham and "Waverley alternately ; and then would 

 remain also the low delivery main from about 22 miles from 

 Sydney in the Port Hacking Valley. This main is proposed to 

 be of 36-inch diameter, estimated to deliver 5,407,533 gallons daily 

 to some reservoir of the same level as Crown-street, if not into 

 that reservoir itself. In all 13,717,567 gallons. 



Here again, for these mains, I am unable to arrive at any satis- 

 factory estimate. All I know is that there are engineering firms 

 here that would be ready to contract for the manufacture of all 

 the mains as fast as they can be wanted. But this much I think 

 I may venture to say, that as three such pipes as I propose for 

 adoption would deliver say twelve (12) millions of gallons of 

 water per day, this would be making provision for a supply and 

 delivery to a population of 300,000 at 40 gallons per head per 

 day, besides having storage and means of supply (less the 

 additional mains) for a full million of a future population, in the 

 works at the sources of supply, and supposed to be completed 

 under my estimate. 



However, let us charge the whole of the proposed works on a 

 population of only 300,000, which Sydney and its suburbs may 

 have in perhaps less than ten years more ; and let us charge that 

 population with an expenditure on these works of only 40s. 

 per head, and we have the sum of £600,000, which I should think 

 would be quite equal to the total expenditure on my scheme for 

 a delivery of 12,000,000 gallons of water daily, with means to 

 increase tlie supply to a very much larger extent. But admitting 

 the possibilty of any under-estimate in the cost of my proposed 

 water scheme, we may be satisfied to pay more for the develop- 

 ment of a scheme which will give us a pure and abundant supply 

 of water by direct gravitation, and which will also afford immense 

 hydraulic power, besides having the means of trebling the supply. 

 Let it be remembered that in London, where material and labour 

 is or was cheap, there the cost of the various water supply 

 works represented a capital, before the great rise in iron and 

 labour, equal to £10,137,000, a sum which represented an expen- 

 diture of 60s. and not 40s. a head upon the then population of 

 that great city, and to which population filtered water is delivered 

 at the rate of £26 per 1,000,000 gallons, or at an average cost of 

 cibout the fortietli pari of a fartliincj per gallon, or say id. per 

 day, or 7s. 7id. per annum, for the average consumption of even 

 40 gallons per day ; and yet the eight Water Companies in London 

 return handsome interest of money on their works and capital 

 invested. "Whereas, in Sydney, our water rates, for unfiltered 

 and impure supplies, are preposterously in excesa of this ; and 

 the cheap blessing that is or should be at our command is denied 



