HYDROLOGY OF NEW YORK 



570 



will store 7,700,000,000 cubic feet, and at site No. 2 a dam of the 

 same hight will store 7,040,000,000 cubic feet. Since no con- 

 clusion has been reached as to which of these sites to adopt, for 

 the purposes of comparison a mean of 7,370,000,000 cubic feet has 

 been taken as the approximate available storage, and the mean 

 of |2,785,000 as the approximate total cost. On this basis the 

 estimated cost of the storage becomes |377.88 per million cubic 

 feet of water stored. These figures should be increased by 25 per 

 cent in order to conform to conditions in 1004. 



Portage site. Investigations of the Genesee river storage 

 project were finally completed in 1S96. In that year detailed 

 surveys were made of a new site known as Portage site, the pro- 

 posed dam to be located at Portageville, about 1400 feet above 

 the Erie railway bridge, at a point where the gorge presents 

 extremely favorable conditions for the erection of a high dam. 

 At this place solid rock exists immediately in the bed of the 

 river, with only a couple of feet of water flowing over it, and also 

 extends high up on the bluffs at either side, whereas at all of the 

 sites in the gorge near Mount Morris the rock was only found at 

 from 15 to 20 feet below the water surface and of such an open 

 texture as to require cut-off trenches about 30 feet deep, or to a 

 total depth of nearly 50 feet below the water. The proposed 

 Portage dam is also 500-feet vertically above the previously men- 

 tioned sites, thus rendering that additional number of feet avail- 

 able for power purposes — a fact which places a materially differ- 

 ent aspect on the commercial side of the Genesee river storage 

 project. 



A short distance above the proposed Portage site the upper 

 Genesee, valley broadens out to a width in places of from one to 

 two miles, although the general width of the valley does not ex- 

 ceed, for several miles in extent longitudinally, about one mile. 

 It narrows in two or three places to a less width than this. The 

 valley is now a good agricultural region, in a fair state of culti- 

 vation, and presents, on the whole, as favorable conditions for 

 farming as any similar valley in the State. The Pennsylvania 

 railway passes through the middle of the valley on the line of the 

 abandoned Genesee Valley canal. Along the line of this railway 

 the villages of Portageville, Kossburg, Wiscoy and Fillmore are 

 situated. The reservoir project includes the relaying of the rail- 



