CXXIV. DISCUSSION. 
DIscuUsSION. 
Mr. Dartey said that after six years working of the system of 
dredging and reclaiming by sand pumps it was both pleasing and 
satisfactory to him as Engineer-in-Chief for Public Works to say 
that the experiment had been most successful, not only in cheaply 
forming river channels, but also in adding valuable areas of land 
to those already held by the Colony. In his annual report on 
dredging for 1895, he had drawn attention to the fact that during 
the five years the sand pumps had been working, the total amount 
of silt raised by all the dredges amounted to 28,750,000 tons, 
which was more than was recorded for the thirteen previous years, 
while in the matter of cost, the five years average was 4-085d. 
per ton, against the thirteen years average of 8:219d. per ton. 
Several miles of stone dyking had been made at the Tweed and 
extensive reclamation works carried out from the silt pumped out 
of the channel of which the dyke was the training wall, Sand 
pumps were working successfully on many of the other northern 
rivers, and at Newcastle two were employed most ad vantageously, 
the land reclaimed having a very high commercial value. To him 
the most gratifying result of all the pumping work had been the 
entirely novel system of dealing with the silt lifted in Sydney 
' Harbour, where there were no available reclamation sites near 
the wharf frontages and channels dredged. Instead of sending the - 
silt to sea, the punts were dumped near low lying and submerged 
land, adjacent to valuable city and suburban properties, and with 
the Von Schmidt dredge, the dumped silt was pumped on to the 
land the property of the State, which was largely benefited both 
sanatorily and pecuniarily. About sixty acres of land had been 
So reclaimed at Leichhardt, a few acres at Callan Park, a CO? 
siderable area at White Bay, and just now about fifty acres ar@ 
being converted from insanitary fever plots into land which i 
soon command a very high price for building purposes. Mr. Portus 
long experience (about thirty years in dredging work) ‘and his 
knowledge of what was being done in other countries gave *— 
special value to the paper read by him. 
