324 



NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



1894. The west branch of Canadaway creek at Fredonia was 

 gaged from July 18 to Septemiber 2, 1883, and Morris run, a tribu- 

 tary of Oatka creek, from July 4 to December 26, 1894. Gibson's 

 creek, another tributary of Oatka creek, was also gaged from Sep- 

 tember 20,1894, to June 21, 1895. During the autumns of 1856 and 

 1857 gagings were made of the following streams on Long Island, 

 which are now a part of the Brooklyn water supply, in order to 

 obtain the minimum delivery : Hempstead, Rockville, Valley, 

 Clear, Brookfield, Springfield and Jamaica brooks. 



Possibly there are other measurements for short periods in the 

 State of New York which have not been made public, but so far 

 as the writer can learn the foregoing include all the systematic 

 measurements of streams made in the State previous to 1898, 

 except those by John B. Jervis, of Madison and Eaton brooks, 

 made in 1835, the results of which are presented in Mr. Jervis' 

 report for that year to the Canal Commissioners. The broad 

 proposition is therefore true that previous to 1898 the data for 

 computing runoff of streams based on careful measurements of 

 the same were limited in the State of New York. 



Rainfall records, however, were more common, and engineers 

 were in the habit of assuming that about 50 per cent of the rain- 

 fall would appear as runoff in the streams. How far from true 

 this is may be seen by inspecting the tables on the following 

 pages. There was absolutely no preception of the fact that in the 

 State of New York streams vary from a minimum runoff of 2 to 4 

 inches to 10 to 12 inches, and that average runoffs of from 8 to 10 

 inches to 20 to 25 inches are common. 



Probably no one mistake of engineers has been more far-reach- 

 ing than this. The great bulk of the earlier water supplies 

 throughout the State are insufficient; power projects have been 

 overestimated, and while there is no way of stating the amount 

 of damage done, it may be easily assumed to rise to several mil- 

 lion dollars. This oversight is purely one of the engineering pro- 

 fession, and the same kind of an oversight is taking place in 

 many other states, in 1904. Indeed, comparatively few engineers 

 fully realize the significance of gagings. 



Streams gaged for Board of Engineers on Deep Waterways. In 

 1898 the writer undertook an investigation for the Board of Engi- 



